


Special Topics In Political Science

by arysani



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The West Wing
Genre: BAMF Darcy Lewis, BAMF Pepper Potts, F/M, Gen, Mistaken identities, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, WinterShock - Freeform, everyone ships James/Darcy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 21:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 35,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4279446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arysani/pseuds/arysani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis is on the hunt for her next adventure, because after New Mexico, London, robots, aliens, and another robot, she finally has her coveted degree in Political Science and job offers aren't exactly pouring in. Luckily for her, adventure takes less than 24 hours to show up on her mother's doorstep dressed like Mr. Smith and leading her to the promised land by way of private jet.</p><p>Thanks to Jane Foster, Darcy dipped her toe in the great ocean of heroes and unbelievable things. If Pepper Potts and Steve Rogers have anything to do with it, Darcy is going to be baptized in that ocean. If Darcy Lewis has her way, she's going to wade in and learn to swim against the tide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Darcy’s finger hovered over the touchpad, the mouse pointer in the perfect position to depress the “submit” button. There was no sense in not doing it - it was one of the sixty jobs she had applied for, and wouldn’t get due to varying reasons that she couldn’t even name. This one in particular would’ve been a better shot if she’d majored in engineering, business, or had a minute’s worth of experience. Still, it was the one she wanted, which made it the one she least wanted to know she was unqualified for. Another “thank you for your interest” missive was not something she wanted to face, with the clean lines of “Stark Industries” on the letterhead. Though, to be fair, getting those letters was better than the incredible amount of dead air she received from so many other applications. Apparently it was no longer required to give lip service to undesirable candidates. 

“Fuck it, whatever”, she hissed to herself and let her questionnaire, her resume, and her letters of recommendation fly through cyberspace.

Her letters of recommendation were pretty damn good, if she said so herself. But, as she was not applying for jobs in any of the STEM fields, they were pretty much just words on a page, terminated by the signatures of people with lots of letters after their names. Doctor Jane Foster was a big deal in astrophysics, but if one was applying for a paralegal position, a JD after her own name would’ve made the right impact. It might be overkill, but considering the quality of people recruited by Stark Industries, it was probably the absolute minimum.

Thor had offered to compose a letter of her achievements, but that seemed a little nepotic. And kind of weird. She didn’t want to be hired because she knew the guy with the hammer. She wanted to be hired because after New Mexico, London, robots, aliens, and another robot (thankfully she was back in New Mexico for that), she had a nice piece of paper with her name and “B.S.” after it. She snort-laughed at that every time she saw it. B.S. Political science wasn’t a science. It was bullshit, but it was hers, and they let her have it after she turned in a complete nonsense thesis which was mostly about Thor and his immortal family politics. “The Sword and the Hammer: Items of Ascension in the Medieval Monarchy and Modern Asgard” was the biggest joke her department ever had cross their desks. Maybe if she was in the English department. Or Anthropology. As a political science thesis that didn’t deal with African warlords or the Middle East, it was probably only the surprise of it that earned her the B-. It was probably a C paper at best. C+ if she was feeling particularly proud of herself. She called it in, and she knew it, and gratefully accepted their uneasy declaration of her completion with a smile.

Darcy Lewis could do better than that, but it had been a really long time since she really tried. 

Looking around her personal island of on-campus en-suite living, there was nothing left except loading her boxes and duffels into her mom’s car. That car would drive them from the dry, red desert of New Mexico (it grew on her - and Virginia felt too foreign; thank Thor for credit transfers) to the dry, brown desert of Las Vegas. The bright light city was the part of town everyone pretended wasn’t really there, trying to huddle in their developments where the night never got really dark, and everything that occurred outside the weirdly planned communities was part of someone else’s life. That’s the desert for you. Only civilization for miles around, and pretending it was just you was preferable to other people. 

Boston could be nice, she thought, apropos of nothing. Boston had great public transportation, and the breezes probably smelled like fish, beans, and patriotism instead of vomit, smoke, and broken dreams. Yeah. Boston.

Her phone buzzed with a text from her mother, who was apparently waiting downstairs and not leaving the car. She let out a huff. Carry everything down herself in six trips. Yep. Home. Goody. Closing the top on her laptop, she reached over to the power strip installed in the desk and unplugged everything, sliding it into her messenger bag. Normal life awaited her, and while she ran away from Jane and all that crazy because bombs and terrorists and giant robots were fucking terrifying and more than she could handle, normal life was setting up to be pretty damn boring.

Which of them was worse occupied her mind for exactly thirteen seconds before her phone actually rang. Before she even got a word out, she heard “DIDN’T YOU GET MY TEXT MESSAGE? I’M WAITING DOWNSTAIRS, DARCY,” and almost made up her mind. Almost.

* * * * *

Finding out that her mother had turned her bedroom into a guest room with a daybed, and that all of her things had been boxed up or tossed or sold almost brought her to tears, but they were tears of frustration, of rootlessness, rather than actually caring that she didn’t have any of her shit anymore. The important things, phone, iPod, passport, good sneakers, best hoodie, pack of gum, taser - they were portable. The rest seemed like nothing but stuff.

The daybed had pink ruffles on it. Giant peonies and pink ruffles. The carpet was the same, but the walls had been repainted a delicate grey. Her mother hovered in the doorway, acting as though she had somehow forgotten that she had completely renovated the room and turned it into a place for strangers, not her daughter. Darcy listened to her mother sigh and shift before she put a smile on her face and turned towards her.

“I’m not going to be one of those kids that lives with her parents forever after college, Mom. We’ll just put my stuff in the garage, and I’ve already sent out a ton of resumes.”

Her mother frowned for a moment and then just hugged her. She hadn’t hugged her when she picked her up, but this moment apparently warranted the affection.

“Whatever you need, baby.”

This time the tears tore at her throat, and swallowing them was like swallowing knives. She’d never been a crier unless she was really angry. All this emotional crap was ruining her cool.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said into her mother’s shoulder, and got a pat on the back for her efforts before her mother decided enough was enough and turned away.

“Your dad is putting chicken on the barbeque. Should be ready in half an hour or so,” she informed her daughter, walking away.

Darcy sighed, and dropped her duffel, pulling her earbuds out of her hoodie pouch and putting them in her ears, flopping down on the daybed, her feet hanging off the edge. Nothing like a little Fleetwood Mac to cure what ails, and she turned up “Dreams” until she couldn’t hear her mother puttering in the kitchen, couldn’t hear the sound of her father lecturing the barbeque grill, couldn’t hear the television in the living room no one was watching, and closed her eyes.

* * * * *

In an effort to be helpful, her mother got her up at seven a.m. and made her eat breakfast, start her own pot of coffee, and listen to a good lecture on how to apply for jobs. Coffee, breakfast - those things she could do with a tenuous grasp on consciousness. Listening to her mother’s lecture, however well-intentioned, was not a thing she could do, and she’d never been so glad for a doorbell at six after seven in the morning as she was right then.

Her mother frowned in the direction of the door and pulled her housecoat closed. “Better not be any of those Mormons. This is just too much. It’s barely seven a.m.!” With a scowl sure to scare the special underwear off any young man trying to spread the gospel at this early, she watched drowsily as her mother stomped off towards the door.

She’d gotten her mug to her face but hadn’t actually put the sweet nectar of the coffee bean in her mouth when she heard her mother screech her name. She managed to spill hot liquid on her hand and let out a string of cuss words before she got up to go where she was summoned.

So it was clad in tiny purple pajama shorts and a tshirt that depicted a Delorean in a crackle of lightning that she greeted two men in black and a woman in a power suit standing on her mother’s front patio, separated from entry by a screen door.

“Darcy Lewis?”

She considered making a quip, considered any number of smart-ass responses, and forwent all of them with a sigh. “Yep. What.”

The woman in the power suit looked at the screen door, then at her. “My name is Donna Moss, executive assistant to Virginia Potts, CEO of Stark Industries. We received your resume and would like to interview you at Stark Tower in New York. We have a plane waiting at the airport to transport you, and you will be back this evening.”

Darcy barely managed to keep her jaw from dropping, and immediately suspected the Black Brigade of being Lying Liars Who Lied. “Could I see some identifications, please?”

Donna smiled, and the two Mr. Smiths provided Stark Industries IDs in unison, Ms. Moss following close behind.

“Could you guys hold on a second? I need to make a phone call.”

“Of course, Miss Lewis.”

She smiled grimly. “Thanks. Great. Mom, they’re not going to bite, and if they’re going to kill us both, they can do it just as well from out there. Give them coffee, at least,” she muttered, walking back to her bedroom and dialing Jane Foster, hoping against hope she wasn’t in another dimension after months of non communicado.

“Darcy?!”

“Jane. Yes. I’m sure we have a lot to catch up on, but I need a really big favor from you right now. You got an in with Tony Stark, right?”

“You want me to help you-”

“I want you to find out for me, preferably in the next five minutes, whether or not the men in black sitting in my mother’s breakfast nook are actually Stark Goons, or if I’m going to need to tap your Princess of Asgard thing for a rescue or possibly a funeral.”

“Darcy, what?”

“Jane. Just find out for me. Five minutes. I’m hanging up now, okay?”

“Um. Okay.”

Darcy disconnected the call and sat on the daybed, trying desperately to not hyperventilate. She was imagining things, for sure. There was no good reason for anyone to kidnap her or kill her parents, or any of that. An email requesting a phone call to set up an interview were more along the lines of expected behavior, but from accounts (having never actually met him), Tony Stark was a Class A Weirdo with little or no grasp on the behavioral expectations of a normal human being. She breathed deeply through her nose like her therapist had her practice, and tried not to think about how her hands were trembling.

The phone lit up before it rang, and she answered it before it made a sound.

“Darcy?”

“That’s who you dialed. Whatcha got for me, Princess Jane?”

A soft snort came through the line, and Darcy’s heart clenched in her chest. She missed her squirrely scientist. “Apparently there are actual Stark Industries people at your house. They want you to come to New York!” The words “New York” came out in a squeal, because Jane was in New York and therefore it was clearly the superior place to be.

“So not HYDRA spies.”

“Probably not.”

“If wishes were horses, I would have wished you were a little more confident than ‘probably’.”

“Darcy. Get on the plane. Come to New York. Stay for a few days. I miss you.”

“I’m getting this weird fuzzy feeling in my chest right now.”

“It might be mold.”

“Could be,” Darcy replied with a smile. “Alright. Soon as I lower my blood pressure, I will pack a bag and get on a plane. See you in New York, Princess Jane.”

It was a mark of how much Jane really missed her that she didn’t insist Darcy leave the “princess” part out of her name. She disconnected the call, brushed out her hair, rolled her pajamas and tucked them into her duffel (which she hadn’t even unpacked), donned her only pair of dress pants and her only blazer, ran her tongue over her sleep-fuzzy teeth, and shouldered the duffel, re-entering the dining room and heading for the kitchen.

She dumped the duffel and her messenger bag on the floor, and met Donna Moss’s gaze. “I’ve got to brush my teeth. Then I’m ready to go.”

“Darcy,” her mother looked slightly worried and got up from the table, following her into the bathroom.

“Mom, it’s an interview,” she said around her toothbrush. “I’ll be gone for a couple of days.” 

“They said you’d be back tonight?”

She spit her toothpaste into the sink, and put her toothbrush back in the rack. “I’m going to see a friend. I’ll call you when I get to New York,” she leaned in and hugged her mom, then went back out into the kitchen, where only Donna waited.

“We put your bags in the car. Ready?”

Darcy straightened her blazer, unbottoning it and rebuttoning it with two quick flicks of her fingers. “As I’ll ever be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started, her name was Donna Fairfax. Then I decided to stop pretending and embrace it. I had to take out some West-Wing-as-fiction references to compensate, but I'm not sad that she went from running the First Lady of America to the First Lady of the World. But I promise, if you don't know who Donna is, I'm not going to leave you in the dark. Actually, I'll wait right here while you go out and watch all 7 seasons of West Wing. Go on. Go. Shoo.


	2. Chapter 2

Darcy swallowed all the “no shit”s and “fuck me”s that came up her throat as she was hustled through the smallest security line she’d ever seen (and the uniforms seemed a lot less mall cop than the TSA usually struck her), and then put in a golf cart and ferried out to a small jet. ‘Small’ being a term that identified a size only applicable to rocket-fueled modes of transportation. Mr. Smith and Mr. Smith flanked her and Ms. Moss as they boarded the plane, and followed after them like a well-oiled machine. Ms. Moss gave the order for takeoff, and settled into a seat, indicating Darcy should sit across the aisle from her.

“We lose time going east. Your appointment with Ms. Potts is at 1pm, and we should be there in plenty of time. Jane Foster’s lab is in the Tower, and her typical work schedule should have her there until well after your interview concludes,” Ms. Moss buckled herself into the seat with precision, and pulled her smartphone out of her bag. “Excuse me,” she held up the phone with a resigned apology on her face. Darcy nodded, and set to buckling herself in. The engines roared and then there was an abrupt silence that made her ears ring.

“The wonder of Stark technology,” Ms. Moss smiled at her, watching Darcy wiggle her finger in her ear in an attempt to get it to pop before they even took off. “... yes, we’re just taking off now. Don’t you have class? Well get to it, Professor. Mm. Love you too. Bye.” Ms. Moss swiped her finger across the phone to end the call and set it on the charge pad in front of her seat.

“I have some documents for you to read - employee handbook, about nineteen NDAs, but I’m sure you’re used to that,” she smiled and reached into her briefcase and handed Darcy a tablet instead of the expected thick stack of paper. “You’ll need to sign all the NDAs and the last page of the employee handbook.”

“Wait, wait, I thought this was an interview. Normally this is post-hired process,” Darcy protested, taking the tablet that was offered to her.

Ms. Moss smiled. “Well just being in the building covers four of the NDAs. I shouldn’t’ve mentioned Dr. Foster’s lab location without two of the others, so if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Still not answering my question.”

Ms. Moss smiled at her, showing bright white teeth. “I wasn’t aware you asked one?”

Darcy scoffed softly. “Alright. So if this is an interview, why am I reading the handbook already? Handbooks are typically post-interview. Post “that interview went really well, we should pay her”.”

“In my experience, you should always walk into a job thinking you have it. If you don’t want to be there, what’s the point?”

“So, what, I act like an employee, and the paycheck will just get direct deposited?”

“There’s another signature required for that. Page F-92.”

“F-92. Got it,” Darcy gave Ms. Moss a tight smile; it was clear she wouldn’t get straight answers out of her at this point. There was probably an NDA for that. “Nothing like a bit of light reading, eh Ms. Moss?” she quipped, hefting the tablet.

“Please, call me Donna.”

“Well Donna, putting forth this level of familiarity means you’re either going to hire me or spread my body parts across the Midwest as we fly over Kansas.”

“Kansas is nice. Less corn than Iowa.”

Darcy pressed her lips together and just nodded. “Good to know.”

They were in the air for only four hours - she was fairly certain the flight should’ve taken longer, but with all the Stark special built-in, they were probably breaking air speed records or something. They touched down in New York shortly after noon, and were hustled off the plane and into a spacious black SUV. One Mr. Smith stayed behind with the plane, while the other took position in the front passenger seat to accompany them to Stark Tower.

Following quickly behind Donna, and thanking Buddha that she wore comfortable loafers (how her escort managed in heels was a mystery of human physiology), she was brought up to the 26th floor, waved past a security guard, and instructed to wait in front of a large reception desk that seemed to guard the enormous glass-walled office behind it.

“This is her one o’clock,” Donna informed the no-nonsense woman behind the desk as she floated past into the glass office. Her name was apparently ‘Judith’, and by Darcy’s reckoning, Judith had never allowed anyone past the desk that didn’t have a DNA sample and ocular scan on file. She smiled and waved her fingers at Judith, because a woman that terse obviously needed a little more lightness in her life. Judith merely stared at her - stared into her soul and measured her for a coffin should she decide to break any of the as-yet-unspoken rules.

“I’m Darcy Lewis.”

“Ms. Lewis,” Judith nodded somberly. “If you’d please have a seat, Ms. Potts will be with you shortly.”

“Yes ma’am,” she nodded and found a suitable chair, suddenly wondering where her duffel and roller suitcase were currently residing. It wasn’t as though the jet they came in on had its own baggage carousel.

“Darcy?” Donna poked her head out of the glass office. “Come on in.”

Inhaling and exhaling deeply, as though she was preparing for a dive, she found her center. She’d freak out about all this later - right now, she needed to be calm, needed to take this whirlwind one step at a time. Holy shit, what was her life?

Walking into the office felt a little bit like walking into the judges panel of America’s Next Top Model. She wasn’t wearing heels, her hair was a mess, and she was way too short, but she was determined to wow them. Somehow.

“Darcy!” Ms. Virginia Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, was a beacon of light and joy. Her smile was infectious, warm, and Darcy couldn’t help but return the expression. Ms. Potts held out her hand, towing over her just enough that Darcy had had to tilt her head up to meet her eyes as she shook her hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Meanwhile I’m trying not to pee myself because I have the issue of Forbes you were on the cover of.”

Pepper laughed. “My mother has three of them. No idea why, unless she carries one around with her.”

“If I was on the cover of anything, my mother would carry around a copy.”

“Well. I’m sorry to rush you, but I’ve got at least thirty things happening in the next ten minutes. Donna can go over the details with you, but I want you on my team.”

“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but, I applied for a legal pool position. My resume said ‘expected job title: grunt’, so excuse me for being all kinds of rude right now, but why?”

Pepper smiled. “Everyone starts somewhere, Darcy. Not everyone can be a genius engineer or an astrophysicist. We need more than just scientists, more than just legal experts and engineers and astrophysicists. Stark Industries has its fingers in a lot of pies, and I believe diversification starts at home.”

“I still don’t…”

“Your resume says you took nine years to get a four year degree,” Donna piped up.

“Well, some… stuff happened.”

“I took seventeen years to finish my degree. And I got it in business because after thirteen years working in professional politics, I didn’t think there was much left to learn. Turns out there is, because there always is, but the important part is, you stuck with it.”

“You traveled quite a lot, caddying for an astrophysicist,” Pepper picked up.

“I needed the gen ed credit.”

“And for someone who wasn’t even a physicist, Dr. Foster spoke quite highly of you.”

“I was the only applicant.”

“You were the only applicant because Dr. Foster was scraping the bottom of the barrel for career legitimacy until the incident in New Mexico. She needed someone to believe in her, and you did. That’s important.”

“So you are offering me a job, which, by the way, I don’t even know what it is, but I’m so starry-eyed right now I’d take just about anything, because I was a slacker who schlepped around the world after a scientist who can’t remember to use the food pyramid?”

“You have _chutzpah_ ,” Donna grinned.

“We like _chutzpah_ ,” Pepper agreed.

“Hey, you said it right!”

“I’m picking up the Yiddish as I go,” Donna beamed.

“So what, exactly, is this job?”

“Donna has me running like the First Lady, which is rather flattering,” Pepper smiled. “So I’ve been looking for a scheduling assistant. Basically, you would keep me on time, work with Judith to put my day together, ensure all the department heads are aware of where I’m going to be, and when. If a meeting looks like it might run long, it’s your job to ensure it doesn’t. You would be responsible for transport, and catering for lunch meetings, and will be taking from Judith all my travel planning; she has more than enough on her plate and is happy to give it up. You will be my timekeeper, Darcy Lewis, and I’m certain that’s only the beginning.”

“Um. Well. I mean, I know how to tell time, and I’m pretty decent with Expedia and yelling at people, so… sure! I mean, why the hell not?”

“Excellent. Since I’m keeping my own time right now, I know I have somewhere else to be, so Donna will be taking care of all your new hire paperwork and getting you settled in. I know you probably need to get some things from Nevada, and that can all be shipped, if you’re okay with that,” she stopped her herself and waved her hand in front of her face. “I’ll let Donna handle the rest, and I’ll see you on Monday. You made the right decision, Darcy, I promise.”

She watched Pepper exit her office and meld into a small group of mixed business personages waiting outside the doors (held in check by the indomitable Judith), who all moved together like an amoeba towards points unknown.

“I think I might puke.”

“Deep breaths through your nose,” Donna offered. “Come on, let’s go have some real fun with Human Resources.”

“Goody.”

* * * * *

What felt like hours later, she was finally released from the clutches of HR. ID badge in hand, and instructions to report at seven a.m. on Monday (oh sweet Moses, _so early_ ). Thankfully her clearance got her onto Jane’s floor without an escort, but once she reached the explosion-proof glass of Lab B9, her clearance failed her utterly. There was no guard to wheedle, so she just pressed her face against the glass and kept sending Jane one word texts.

“Hey.

“Jane.

“Look

“Up

“I’m

“Outside

“Your

“Lab.

“Hey.

“Jane.”

Right about the fourth “hey”, Jane finally started to investigate the text message notifications, and Darcy watched with a grin as she caught up, and looked up to see her plastered against the glass.

Jane rushed over to the doors and hit the security release to open them, spilling Darcy into her arms.

Darcy hugged her tightly, having forgotten, until that very millisecond, exactly how much she missed her tiny, crazypants science space-viking princess.

“I missed you,” Jane squealed softly into Darcy’s blazer.

“Apparently I did too because you’re not the only one holding up this viciously tight hug we’ve got going on.”

“Congratulations, by the way,” Jane pulled away. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your graduation.”

“Jane, I didn’t go to my graduation.”

“But why?!”

“Because I didn’t want to? It’s okay, they still gave me my puffy vinyl folder with the placeholder paper until the real thing arrives in the next eight to twelve weeks. I just saved myself the ugly red and white graduation attire.”

“You really didn’t want to go?”

“Nah. I only used them for credit transfers because I missed the desert. Going back to Culver after New Mexico and Norway and London and everything? It felt like the Twilight Zone. Everything was exactly the same, as though everyone else had just… kept on living even though so many things had happened. So I went back to New Mexico.”

“I thought you hated New Mexico.”

“Turns out I hated being in the same time zone as my parents. New Mexico was an unfortunate bystander.”

“Oh. Well. You’re not in the same time zone as them now! That’s good, right?”

“I also don’t hate my parents like 20-year-old Darcy did. They’re actually not bad people, I was just having a hard time being a young adult.”

“Wow. Okay,” Jane laughed uneasily. “So, um, you interviewed, right?”

“Mmm, not so much. I was mostly paraded in front of Pepper Potts and lectured at about my place in the circle of life. Apparently I am the clockwinder.”

“Huh?”

“Pepper likes taking in strays. Even better are strays her executive assistant also likes, and who have letters of recommendation written by Stark scientists and former SHIELD collaborators. You know, before the thing.”

“It was so weird - my SHIELD contract was terminated, and a job offer from Stark Industries showed up just as SHIELD was repossessing all my work. Again. Well. HYDRA, apparently. They didn’t get the good stuff, and I followed the Stark guy right out of the office before they could inventory my lab coat.”

“That’s my girl!”

“So you’re staying, right?”

“Girl, I get to put “assistant to Pepper Potts” on my business card. Heck yes, I’m staying. Actually, you have a couch I can crash on for a few days? I’m going to need to take advantage of my security clearance and run background checks on roommate.com potentials.”

“Darcy, I have a guest bedroom.”

“Sweet! A real bed!”

“I was actually looking for a roommate, and it would be nice to have someone to talk to on the train so the subway preachers don’t-”

Her words were cut off by another Darcy Lewis tight hug.

“When I wake up and this is all a dream, I’m going to be really pissed,” she mumbled into Jane’s hair.

Jane just giggled.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a slog filler chapter, but it had to be done - burning questions had to be answered, and I had to get Darcy actually in the building. From here on out, it's going to be more character-centric as Darcy finds her footing and her "people". Timeline will march forward.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who commented and kudos'd - I threw this out in the ether because I'm trying to rediscover my muse, and finding so many folks embracing the Donna Moss love and just plain being supportive of my "holy crap it's been so long since I've written fic" fic is awesome. Did I already say that? Awesome. You are awesome. Thank you.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The meet cute.

_Six months later…_

“Chinese tonight?”

“You’re wallowing,” Jane chastised.

“Of course I’m wallowing. I wanted to be in China right now.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Darcy cocked her head to the side for a moment, and then spotted the menu for China City held up by a magnet on the hidden part of the fridge. She grabbed it and let it unfold. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t mind not going on trips when it was here, but China? My passport is lonely.”

“Well, you and your passport are both going to be lonely this weekend. I’m going upstate.”

“Sex weekend?”

“I really wish you would stop calling them that,” Jane sighed.

“But that’s what they are. Why call a thing something other than it is?”

“Because it’s crude?”

“Janey, my love, no one blames you for taking sex weekends with your thunder god. If I had a thunder god, I would tell people that suggested I was going on sex weekends with him ‘yes, yes I am.’ Because Thor is gorgeous and someone should be hitting that.”

“We don’t just have sex, you know.”

“I know that, but as we’ve already talked about my loneliness, I need to live vicariously through you and what is, I’m sure, a slammin’ sex life.”

“He’s a lot smarter than anyone gives him credit for,” Jane insisted, and grabbed for the menu. Darcy let her have it.

“Jane. He’s like, a thousand years old and knew constellations you didn’t know. I know he’s not the dumb jock he appears to be. But I can’t really wrap my mind around him being hot, smart, and a nice guy. That’s the ideal trifecta and I have lived my entire life believing it only exists in romance novels so as to justify my own repeated acceptance of less than all three.”

“Darcy,” Jane began, her shoulders dropping in preparation of more words Darcy didn’t want to hear.

“Ah ah. Nope. Not going there,” Darcy held up her hands. “I was justifying the sex weekend thing. This is not an invitation to remark on my sex life. Or lack thereof.”

“I’m just saying.”

“No, you’re just being quiet. I don’t care how many single scientists you know. Decide what you want, and I’ll order.”

Jane folded up the menu and handed it back, having barely perused it. “You know what I want.”

“Yeah I do,” Darcy replied, her tone and smirk making it incredibly suggestive.

Jane just rolled her eyes and sighed, but couldn’t help the tiny smile at the corner of her mouth.

* * * * *

“Kids coming to visit you this weekend, right?” Darcy shoved her heels in her bag, and pulled out the sneakers she wore for the train commute, dropping each of them with a resonant thump on the hardwood floor.

Judith carefully packed her things away, everything in its place. Darcy envied her ability to make her desk look like she did nothing. She glanced quickly at her own desk, shielded from view by the cubicle partition. There was no mystery to the amount of work she did - it was clear from the organized chaos in three different inboxes, four tabbed folders, and a lion’s mane of post-its around her computer monitor.

“Mm-hmm. We’re taking the babies to the zoo,” she admitted without a smile, but with clear affection in her voice.

“I still haven’t been.”

“To which one?”

“There’s more than one?”

Judith straightened up to look at her as she tied her sneakers. “You’ve lived in this city half a year already - get out and see it!”

Darcy snorted. “I lived twenty minutes from the Strip the entire time I was growing up and still managed to not be a city person. This is my adjustment period,” she asserted, and hefted her bag up over her head so it fit crosswise across her back. “I’m going outside my comfort zones by trying different train schedules, that’s about as much excitement as my life can take right now. I’ll see you Monday,” she headed for the door. “Have tons of fun!”

Returning to her empty apartment, Darcy threw her bag on the couch and sat next to it, sinking into the cushions. Judith had a point. She was in New York frickin’ City, and her only friend was Jane. She had work acquaintances, but none of them materialized in her life outside of work hours. She hadn’t even pursued any friendships besides Jane’s - and she began to realize that she’d settled into her comfortable routine fairly quickly and found no reason to alter it. But then there were weekends that Jane wasn’t home, or couldn’t be pried out of her lab for anything, and Darcy suddenly found herself with an excess of time.

She liked being alone, but there was only so many blogs to read, so many back episodes of “Once Upon A Time” to watch, before she got bored.

It was only Friday afternoon, and bored was already hovering on the periphery. She looked around at her empty apartment for several minutes, contemplating being alone in it all weekend without a single shred of human interaction, and promptly decided that she was not going to be a Lonely Lucy just because she couldn’t be bothered to make friends.

She hauled herself up from the couch, and headed for her bedroom, with the intent to change into something less work and more off-hours. She’d read somewhere that in her post-college adulthood, the best way to make friends was to go places she liked to be, and she’d find people who also liked to be there - boom, level one friendship.

And the place she most liked to be in New York City was under the blue whale.

So she grabbed her favorite knit hat, and headed for the subway, bound for Central Park West.

* * * * *

An afternoon spent contemplating the insignificance of human life in the grand spectrum of the universe (thank you, Neil Degrasse Tyson), left her with a powerful need for caffeination and a cheap, second-run movie. She had no real desire to be on the train and walking home after dark, so she decided to save the movie for a Saturday matinee, and instead just take the coffee to go. Maybe something sweet and dessert-y, like a frappucino.

There was a Starbucks near the subway, and it was blissfully uncrowded. She walked in to the echo of folk music reverberating off vaulted ceilings, and the smell of freshly ground coffee. There were the requisite array of undergrads click-clacking away on laptops, serious-looking post-grads collating notes, and the odd aspiring novelist staring out at nothing in particular instead of actually novelizing. She stood in line behind some fool leaning over the counter and flirting with the barista. She figured it couldn’t last long, and pulled out her phone, checking email and scrolling through her Facebook. Someone got up from a table and stood behind her, jostling an empty cup still full of ice. She waited.

“I don’t know, doll. Make something special for me. What’s your favorite?”

The barista giggled, and her breathy response included the words ‘caramel’ and ‘whipped cream’. Darcy heard him respond positively to the whipped cream, if the cadence of his voice was any gauge. The person standing behind her shifted and rattled his cup of ice cubes and sighed. She looked over her shoulder and he was reading something off his smartphone, not really paying attention.

“Make the man a funky monkey so I can have my coffee and let you get back to it,” she said loudly, and both barista and Rico Suave turned to face her.

“Funky monkey?” Rico sounded incredulous, like the two words had no business being in such close proximity to each other.

“Mocha frap with a fresh banana blended in.”

Rico gave her a considering look which turned into a smirk. “I kinda like the sound of that.” He rolled back into his lean over the counter. “Can you do that for me, doll?” The barista nodded and grabbed a cup.

“Name?”

“I’ll trade you for your number,” Rico replied.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. Write James T. Kirk on it and take some more orders,” she peered at the nametag, “Jess, because pretty soon you’re going to have a student riot on your hands if these fine folks can’t get their free refills.”

Rico rolled halfway back towards her and smiled before facing the barista again. “James is good enough, Jess. I don’t want to hold up this young woman any longer.”

Jess the barista blushed prettily, and didn’t even charge James-Rico for his drink. He moved out of the way, and swept his arm in front of Darcy, as though she were royalty.

“Sorry I held you up, doll.”

Darcy scoffed. “You’re only sorry I interrupted before you got her number. Don’t worry. I bet she writes it on the cup right next to when she gets out tonight.”

Rico grinned, letting out a soft chuckle and tonguing his lip. “Touché. Nice job on the name though.”

She laughed as someone else came to the register to take her order. She handed over her shiny Starbucks gold card and ordered a mocha frap with the banana blended in, and the barista swiped her card and labeled her cup with a minimum of verbal interaction. She moved towards the pickup counter and James followed her.

“So I’m curious. Good guess, or…?”

“Or what, you want me to hand you a card with my 1-900 number so you and I can have a chat about your future later?” He gave her a quizzical look. “It was Kirk or Rico Suave. You seemed like more of a Kirk.”

“James,” Jess the barista was back, and she handed him his drink personally, and smiled at him. Darcy laughed, because she could see a little note written on the cup peeking out from underneath where he held it.

James smiled back, and even winked at the barista, before turning the cup in his hand and reading the note. He looked up at Darcy and smiled. “You are some fortune-teller,” he paused, giving her a significant look for her to fill in her name. She didn’t, and her drink slid across the pickup counter, and she grabbed it. “Darcy,” he read off the cup.

“You know you got good game, Kirk. False modesty doesn’t become you. Cheers,” she lifted her drink in a salute and headed towards the door. He pushed past the now extended line to slip in front of her.

“Not going to sit and enjoy your creation?”

“Got a subway to catch. Nice chatting with you,” she nodded and tried to move past him, but he blocked her again.

“My name really is James. It’s nice to meet you, Darcy.”

She pressed her lips together in a forced smile. “James, the hand not holding my coffee has turned on the taser in my pocket, and if you don’t let me past, I’m going to take the chance on the illegal weapons possession charge. Right here in front of your girlfriend Jess. You’ll probably pee yourself when you go down. It won’t be attractive. It’ll probably ruin your date.”

He lifted both hands, one encased in a black glove, and the other clutching his drink, up to his face. “Whoa there, doll. Violence isn’t necessary.”

“Please let me through, James. I have a subway to catch,” she said with a smile.

He held her gaze for a moment, then turned to the side to let her through. He took a sip of his drink as she walked past.

“This is pretty good!”

She raised her own cup above her head in acknowledgement, but did not turn to face him.

She let out a huff of air when she got a few strides down the street, not realizing she’d been holding her breath. She flicked the taser off and fished her metro card out of her jeans and entered the turnstyle. Enough excitement for one night, she told herself, and wonder of wonders, found a seat on the train. She stuck her straw in her mouth and waited for her stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if you hadn't noticed, I'm playing a little fast and loose with some MCU timelines. This theoretically takes place somewhere between Ultron and Thor: Ragnarok, but I'm going to be shoving in some stuff I'm completely making up about Infinity Wars based on a really thin desire to have Star Lord show up to make quips, have Carol Danvers hang out with Gamora, and a tiny thread that I saw mentioned in some Secret Wars discussions since I'm behind on that too. So while Loki may appear if this story ever gets a sequel, that's not happening here. So far as anyone knows, Loki is dead, and Odin is being weirdly benevolent with regards to Thor's part-time Prince-ing.
> 
> I'm going to try and get on a weekly posting schedule, so here's to Tuesday deadlines.


	4. Chapter 4

“Darcy, what do you have going on this afternoon?” Donna peeked her head around Darcy’s cubicle, and leaned against it, propping her elbow on the top of the partition. Darcy looked up at her and felt a brief trill of jealousy related to the fact that she worked for two exeedingly tall women. The Lewises were built short, and no heel she was willing to wear could possibly give her the gravitas of either Donna or Pepper.

“Boss lady has the fundraising meeting with the outreach coordinator for that housing and shelter project that we’re co-sponsoring in Brooklyn, and then I’ve got to get her set up for the thing next week.”

“I want you to be in on the fundraising meeting. Take some notes. I’ve got something else on my plate and if you could sit in for me, I’d really appreciate it.”

Darcy’s eyes widened. “Me? I don’t… I don’t know anything about this meeting.”

Donna smiled, and folded her arms across her chest. “You know all the players and the agenda - that’s enough.”

“What kind of notes?” Darcy pulled a legal pad over in front of her as Donna began to reply.

“I’ll need you to debrief me afterwards - status, recommendations, timeline changes, anything we’re going to have to dig in about to make sure that we stay on schedule. I know they’ve been discussing having a black tie at two-k a plate, but they didn’t have a location or entertainment lined up, and I don’t know if they want a presentation and a speaker for the project, or if they’re just looking to have an exclusive, fancy party without any of our statistics.”

“Okay. Sure. Yeah. I can do that.”

Donna let out a short laugh. “Take notes? Yeah, I think you can handle it. Thanks.”

“No problem, Boss!” Darcy shouted after her as Donna walked away. She grinned to herself for a moment before picking up her phone to text Jane. This wasn’t a trip to China, but if there was any hope for China in her future, this is where it would start.

The meeting was quick - exactly twenty minutes in the schedule for the outreach coordinator, Lauren, to inform them that the property for the women’s shelter had been purchased, and the three houses being built in the empty lot down the street had already begun construction. Stark Industries was partnering with the NYC Department of Human Services and the Borough of Brooklyn to set up a low-rent shared-housing development for women leaving the shelter once treatment was concluded. The shelters simply could not sustain a static population forever, and dumping the women back on the streets or sending them back into dangerous home situations was not ideal, but the Section 8 housing in the city was a mess - they simply did not have enough properties to offer for every woman leaving a shelter. Each house would have a rotating schedule of Resident Directors who would ensure that the women were engaged in job training or maintaining their employment, while continuing to receive therapeutic care from an on-staff counselor, in a home where private security vetted and trained through SI would be responsible for maintaining a safe environment. The acute treatment the shelter could provide was a band-aid, and not enough to truly get many of the residents back on their feet. Some could leave a shelter and find their own way - but many, especially those with children, were dumped back into the system and often found themselves either back on the shelter’s steps or much worse in a relatively short period of time.

It was an experimental project, receiving grants from several non-profits, but no amount of funding from those avenues could truly provide a long-term solution - at best, with that sort of funding base, the project would last a year and dry up, leaving the women stranded again. Stark Industries coming on the scene and helping to fund an endowment for the project gave the entire venture a much better chance for survival. Salaries would be paid by the state and local governments, but the construction costs would be footed by SI, but the maintenance would come from the endowment, and the endowment would come into existence because friends of SI had deep pockets.

Lauren made it her job to know everyone with deep pockets, and to keep her ear to the ground for any rumblings of projects just such as these that would benefit from a little heavy lifting. Her next project, if this one worked out, was a shelter exclusively catered to transgender women - this project would be the example she would set on a pedestal to prove their shelter-to-housing model could work as promised.

The black tie event would be a brief presentation of the project, which Pepper and Lauren would speak for, followed by dinner and dancing with a small jazz ensemble. The chef was doing the work pro-bono as a way to advertise his new restaurant opening next month - nothing like whetting the appetites of your prospective clientele.

Seventeen minutes into the meeting, Lauren had hit all her salient points, and opened the floor to questions. Pepper had been taking her own notes (something Darcy admired about her - she didn’t rely entirely on someone else’s listening skills, preferring to deconstruct the meeting afterwards with Donna - and Darcy always gave their meetings a 5 minute window for that brief, post-meeting discussion), and looked up with a smile.

“I think I’ve got all I need for now. Darcy,” Pepper gestured with her hand, startling her, “is going to take point on future updates, so make sure to keep her informed so she can keep me informed.”

“No problem,” Lauren replied. “I have all your contact information, and the invitations are set to go out next week, so you can get it on your calendar.” Lauren stood. “I appreciate you taking the time for this meeting personally, Ms. Potts.”

Pepper stood and shook her hand. “Of course. Thank you,” she replied, and left the room, Darcy in her wake.

Darcy waited until they were back in Pepper’s office for the post-meeting deconstruction before unloading her surprise.

“I know you only have five minutes, I only gave you five minutes, but when did I become point-man for this?”

Pepper looked up and smiled, as she reached for a folder on her desk adorned with a note in Judith’s handwriting for her next meeting. “I told you scheduling assistant was only the beginning. We’ve got some bigger projects coming, and I want to see how you do. Think of it as a field evaluation,” she smirked. “I’m putting you in a meeting with marketing on Thursday - just a bit of shopping a clean energy presentation. Proprietary SI technology, of course, but I want you to make yourself known to the marketing team at least by name, because we will likely need you to coordinate with them on the shelter project in the coming months.”

Darcy let out a little huff of air. “Okay. Alright. Well. The meeting. I like her ideas, I like that she’s making friends at HUD and HHS for future projects, and I’ll need to familiarize myself a little more with the milestones in order to accurately assess weaknesses.”

“I’m going to want you to start feeling her out on the next project. We’re going to need to evaluate all our subcontractors and interview the RDs and counselors to find out what we’re going to need to get going on the new shelter. If this shows success, we’ll need to jump on getting funding for the new project immediately. What’s next?”

“R&D level 14 - I don’t have clearance to know what that is, just that they have a conference room with your name on it.”

Pepper smiled. “Okay. Good. Sit down with Donna for a few minutes this afternoon to bring her up to speed, and make sure that we’re inviting all the right people to the black tie. Donna still has some contacts at NOW that will be helpful if we need to check our guest list.”

“Done and done, Boss,” Darcy rose to leave, and Pepper followed behind her, holding the door open. Darcy turned to face her. “Boss?”

“Yes, Darcy?”

“Thanks for this,” she hefted the tablet with her notes from the meeting and debrief.

“Just making sure you’re staying challenged,” Pepper grinned, and Darcy couldn’t help but smile back.

* * * * *

Darcy met with Donna, and Donna said she’d make a call to one of her contacts at NOW, and have her contact Darcy. Networking, Donna informed her, was all about making the connection. Soon, she assured Darcy, her contacts would be Darcy’s contacts, merely because the introduction had been made.

Packing up her bag for the evening (she looked forward to Friday - after putting in just a little more time each day, she got to fly the coop Friday at lunch, practically a three-day weekend), she put her phone to her ear, and sat to tie her sneakers.

“Jane.”

“Yeah?”

“Stopping by the deli on the way home.”

“The one with the things?”

“Perogies.”

“Yeah, those.”

“Of course. You eating at home tonight, or do I have to have something delivered to the lab?”

“If you’re bringing the things, I’ll be home.”

“Excellent. Maybe I’ll even pick up some bigos.”

“What’s that?”

“It’ll go with the perogies.”

“I’ll be home around 7.”

“Dinner will be waiting, sweetie,” Darcy replied sweetly, and Jane made a disgusted noise and hung up. Darcy laughed as she shoved her cellphone into the pouch of her hooded sweatshirt and pulled her bag over her head.

Getting off the stop nearest the deli, she had to walk a couple of blocks. She’d had a craving for bigos and while a true Polish deli was yet to be discovered, she’d found an eastern European catch-all, with a small buffet of hot food and where the perogis were handmade. The doorbell tinkled as she entered the place, and the smell of cabbage could’ve knocked out lesser mortals.

There was no one at the counter to greet her, but once her eyes drifted towards the two tiny tables at the one end, the older man on duty looked up and rose from his seat, clapping another man on the back and coming towards the counter.

“What can I get for you, _malyshka_?”

“Dozen cheese and onion perogis, dozen lamb, and a pound of bigos.”

“Perogis and bigos.”

“You have any golabki?”

“Yes, of course,” the man looked down at her as though she was silly to ask.

“Um, half dozen of those too. Do they freeze well?”

“Yes, _malyshka_ , you freeze them okay.”

“Dozen even, then.”

“You got it.”

He lumbered over to the hot food buffet with a plastic container, and began spooning the cabbage and pork stew into it.

“Darcy?”

She turned at the sound of her name and was face to face with Starbucks guy.

“Heeeeey,” she said, trying not to show her discomfort. A hundred things raced through her mind - New York was not a small place. The odds of running into the same person twice and not on purpose was pretty damn small. She couldn’t do the math, but it was not this good. Her old fear of being stalked by HYDRA goons floated to the surface for a millisecond, but she suppressed it - the likelihood that they knew she was here… well, unless they had her phone tapped. Her heart beat quickly as she realized it was possible, and then she inhaled deeply to slow it. She was being ridiculous.

He looked at her oddly for a moment, and cocked his head. “James. From the Starbucks. The funky monkey? Sorry, you prob'ly don’t remember me,” he smiled uneasily.

“I remember,” she acknowledged. “You and, uh, the barista have a nice date?”

He snorted softly and looked down before looking back up at her. “I wouldn’t know.”

She couldn’t help the words that spilled from her lips. “You sly dog. Love ‘em and leave ‘em, huh?”

“Someone distracted me.”

She let out a short bark of a laugh. “Funny,” she said, just as the man at the counter handed over the first of two bags. “Thanks.”

“Thirty,” he said, and she left the white bags on the counter to pull the cash from her wallet. While she counted it out, the man at the counter turned to Starbucks guy.

“ _Vy khotite chto-nibud' chtoby zabrat' domoy, synok_?”

“ _Vy znayete, chto on ne pozvolit mne vernut'sya domoy bez kolbasy_ ,” Starbucks guy responded, and she looked over, startled, as he laughed.

“So, you speak Russian?” she handed over the cash.

“Lived there for awhile. Hard to not pick it up.”

She pressed her lips together in thought, and grabbed the two white plastic bags (heavy, double-bagged). “Well this was surreal. Never know how small a place is until you’re tossing aside the laws of probability.”

He side-stepped her, but didn’t block her path this time. “You think maybe the laws of probability are trying to tell us something?”

“Besides ‘it’s a small world after all’?”

He smiled. “I was thinkin’ more along the lines of ‘could I take you out sometime’?”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Only the ones I wanna take out sometime,” he shot back with a smirk and a wink.

She narrowed her gaze, shifting the heavy bags. “It’s really weird, you being here.”

“If I was followin’ you, doll, I’d’ve made sure we crossed paths again weeks ago.”

“Not really toning down the stalker vibe.”

“Here you go,” the man at the counter handed over another double-bagged plastic bag to Starbucks guy. “Say hello for me, yes?”

“ _Ya vsegda pomnite, dyadya_.”

“ _Khorosho. Teper ostav'te. Khodit svoy devushku domoy,_ ” deli guy gestured at her and she watched the two of them babble in a language she had absolutely no fluency in. At best, she could do a Sean-Connery-speaking-Russian accent. She huffed to herself.

“ _Ona ne moya devushka_.”

“ _Starat'sya_!” This time the quickly moving hands were directed at Starbucks guy, who laughed and shook his head before looking over at her.

“Okay, what’d I miss? What are you saying about me?”

“He thinks I should walk you home.”

“Not good to be out late,” the man behind the counter waved at the front window, presumably to the waning light outside the window.

“I’m only walking to the subway."

“He’s a good boy. He’ll walk you,” the man insisted, nodding at her as though he'd made the decision and that was that. She widened her eyes and looked over at Star... James again. With a little sigh of resignation, she shifted her bags to her wrist and reached in her sweatshirt pouch.

“Here, I’ll even carry this for you, so you can keep one hand on your taser,” he reached out towards her bags, the smile in his eyes.

“I was actually just looking for my metro card,” she informed him sharply, and fished her phone out, sending a quick text to Jane.

[[ _At deli, being walked to subway by dude from sbx. small world. just telling you in case they find my body._ ]]

She slipped her phone back in her pouch. “Alright, let’s go.” She paused, and he lifted her plastic bags off her wrist. “Well okay then. Thanks. Lead on, James” she swept an arm towards the door. “Don’t smush my golabki.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations are phoentic via Google. Forgive me if they’re terrible - I don’t actually know Russian sentence structure. Though if anyone knows Russian and wants to be my translator minion, I'm taking applications.
> 
> Vy khotite chto-nibud' chtoby zabrat' domoy, synok = You want anything to take home, son?
> 
> Vy znayete, chto on ne pozvolit mne vernut'sya domoy bez kolbasy = You know he won’t let me come home without the sausage
> 
> Ya vsegda pomnite, dyadya = I always remember, Uncle
> 
> Khorosho. Teper' ostav'te . Khodit svoy devushku domoy. = Of course. Now go. Walk your girl home.
> 
> Ona ne moya devushka. = She’s not my girl
> 
> Starat'sya! = Keep trying!
> 
> Polish foods: perogies are potato stuffed raviolis - but with dough instead of pasta; bigos is also known as "Hunter's Stew", made with sauerkraut and pork; golabki is beef or pork and rice mushed together and wrapped in boiled cabbage leaves similar to Greek dolmades. I miss Polish food. I may have been hungry writing the second half of this chapter.


	5. Chapter 5

They walked insulated in a strained silence.

“The subway is just down there,” she pointed. “You really don’t have to walk me,” she looked up at him walking leisurely beside her.

“I promised,” he gave her a half smile.

“You always keep your promises?”

It was asked in jest, and she fully expected a response along the lines of ‘only when pretty ladies are involved’, but the question seemed to give him pause. She glanced over again when he didn’t immediately respond, and he looked thoughtful, a concerned furrow to his brow.

“I try,” he finally said, and she nodded to herself, letting the sounds of the city settle between their words.

“So. First Manhattan, now Brooklyn. You take in a lot of territory.”

“Could say the same of you,” he replied.

“Yeah,” she admitted, reluctant to divulge information personal enough to land her in trouble. She briefly considered that she used to be much more trusting, and laughed a little to herself about how many things had contributed to her change in attitude. Really, just the first guy falling out of the sky should’ve made her think a little more critically about seemingly incomprehensible situations. A quick glance at him reassured her that he had too much comfort with his environment to be an Asgardian immortal.

“Something funny?”

She caught his gaze and realized that despite her expressed discomfort earlier, her instincts were not telling her to be wary. The easy set of his shoulders and the way he held himself, even dressed in some combination of fitness and military casual, seemed geared towards a feeling of not quite ‘safety’, but an assurance that threats were not particularly threatening. That feeling which radiated from him somehow gave her comfort as though she, not a threat, had nothing to worry about from him.

“I work in Manhattan,” she volunteered, taking the leap. “But I live here in Brooklyn.”

“Small world,” he replied quietly, the smile in his voice evident and she looked over at him again, her eyes constantly drawn to him, this time a question on her face asking him for more. “Well, I used to live here. Do a bit of work in Manhattan,” he shrugged, letting the words drift out alone. “Explains it though,” he said after a pause, and she felt like he was going to say something different, but changed his mind.

They approached the subway stairs, and she turned to face him.

“Well, thanks for keeping me from getting mugged,” she offered awkwardly, fingers twitching to take her bags back from him.

“Yeah,” he looked away, pushing the gloved hand into his hair and the motion was stilted as he pulled his hand back. He muttered to himself and she smiled quizzically, because the words she caught made it sound like he said ‘used to be good at this’. This what, she could guess, but she had to disagree.

“Wasn’t kidding you. Earlier,” he had plastered that flirty smirk on his face again.

“About?”

“You gonna make me ask again?” he sounded amused and incredulous, and she tried to keep her smile from spreading wide across her face.

“Yep, sure am.”

He grinned down at her and the stupid smile escaped because his grin lit up his face, and made his eyes practically sparkle. It was totally unfair to the rational centers of her brain which were yelling ‘stranger danger’ at quieter and quieter volumes with each of his smiles.

“I’d like to take you out sometime, is what I’m sayin’.”

She pretended to consider it for a moment. “Coffee? I could do coffee after work. I don’t want to rub it in your barista girlfriend’s face, but that’s my Starbucks.”

“She ain’t my girl. She’ll get over it,” he asserted. “You gonna make me wait or can we do this week?”

“Thursday? 5ish?”

“Sounds like a plan, doll.” He handed over her bags and winked at her as he backed away, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Can’t wait.”

“Go home, Romeo.”

“I really do prefer James,” he shot back.

She watched him back away and spin on a heel to head towards the deli. She waited a few seconds, considering his retreating form, and wondered if this was how dating happened now that college was gone and she worked in an office of attached women - random encounters with strange men that resulted in coffee dates. She nodded to herself, restraining from patting herself on the back only because of the bags of Polish food weighing down her hand. He suddenly turned back towards her, catching her looking.

“It’s only two days, dollface! Don’t start missin’ me already!” The Brooklyn accent, all but absent in their earlier conversation was laid on thick.

She flapped a hand at him. “In your dreams, palie!” she shouted back, in her poor approximation of his accent, and turned towards the subway entrance.

She definitely heard him yell back ‘you bet’ as she started down the stairs.

* * * * *

Opening the door to their apartment, she was immediately set upon by Jane.

“You’re alive!”

Darcy laughed, arms pinned uncomfortably in place by Jane. “Um, yes. Yes I am.”

“I thought you were killed by a hobo or something.”

Darcy chuckled softly and hugged Jane awkwardly with one arm that only bent at the elbow, then patted her ribs to make her release her. Her fingers felt like they might fall off from the weight of the bags.

“I said Starbucks guy,” she headed towards the kitchen. “Starbucks guy was a bit scruffy with the hipster ponytail, but he was, is, definitely not a hobo.”

She began setting out the food, no longer hot, but still warm.

“Well, I worried,” Jane followed her into the kitchen.

“Aww, thanks Mom.”

Jane just huffed at her and grabbed a perogi out of the styrofoam container.

“Seriously Darcy. This isn’t Puente Antigo. New York is full of weirdos. You never know.”

Darcy bit her tongue to avoid any retorts along the lines of information about how she was a grown-ass woman who had lived in places a lot more dangerous than Puente Antigo, like, say, London during an alien invasion while Jane was off being a space princess. Instead, she spooned the Polish stew into two bowls, and pushed the first one over to Jane, then handed her a plastic spoon from the bag.

“He was perfectly nice. Downright gentlemanly. He was at the deli, he’s apparently Russian or something, and the deli dude told him to walk me home, so he walked me down the street to the subway station.” She took a bite of her stew and let out a little moan of long-denied pleasure. “And then he asked me out for coffee.”

Jane abruptly stopped chewing and stared at her.

“What?”

“You heard me. It was bound to happen sometime. You know, if the universe gives a shit about me at all. Internet dating is for the looney birds. None of those dates turned out to be worth my time. I’m embracing the old fashioned meet cute.” Darcy grabbed a golabki and bit into it.

“I thought he was creepy,” Jane picked up a golabki and examined it thoughtfully before gently biting into it and not quite catching the liquid that escaped, running down her chin.

Darcy chewed a moment and waved her hand in the air in a so-so motion.

“Not creepy, really. A player, definitely. It was creepy to see him again, but I guess he works in Manhattan too, and knows deli dude, they were like, chums. So he laid it on me like it was kismet or something. He’s kinda hot, so I figured why not?” she shrugged and took another bite, shoving the rest of the golabki in her mouth as the cabbage casing disintegrated in her hand.

“How hot?”

“Not Thor-hot, but definitely like, badass hottie. He was mixing comfy yogi hipster with break your back with his hand karate dude. All black. Like a ninja. Like, secretly he’s probably cut. Really great smile. Pretty eyes. You know. The usual.”

Jane grinned and wagged her eyebrows, clearly now on board for the hottie ninja hipster. “Paid a lot of attention, huh?”

“Of course! I’m not gonna date a dude I don’t find attractive!”

“What happened to ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’?”

“Can’t fake chemistry. Either it’s there, and you find out if you mesh, or it’s not, and no amount of meshing will make you more than friends.”

“That the sum of your online dating wisdom?”

“Pretty much.”

“Chemistry is just pheromones, you know.”

“Yeah, that. Whatever. Hottie and I are getting coffee on Thursday.”

“Public place?”

“Yes mother. Same Starbucks. I just have to hope that barista he was trying to get with last time doesn’t spit in my latte.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah. Well. How was science today, Jane?”

Jane tried to chew quickly to answer her. “Dr. Banner has been helping me the last few days. It’s kind of overwhelming. Or at least quite whelming.”

“Because you fangirl him.”

“I do not!”

“Do so. It’s okay Jane. You both love science, and science can love both of you equally. It doesn’t have to choose.”

“Sometimes I think you’re making fun of me,” Jane scowled but the effect was ruined by the smile threatening at the corner of her mouth.

“You know it. So Dr. Banner is amazing at science. Are you and Tony and him all gonna have a giant science orgy?”

“I don’t think Dr. Banner and Tony Stark have science orgies anymore.”

“Oh. Right. The robot thing. Glad I wasn’t here for _that_.”

“I bet if Tony and Dr. Banner worked with me for just a couple of days we could build our own damn bifrost.”

“Whoa. Language, Jane.”

“It’s just frustrating sometimes, you know? Thor has to be away all the time doing Avengers stuff, and going back to Asgard to placate his dad so he keeps letting him ‘play about’,” she dropped her voice in emulation of Thor, “with silly mortal concerns. Even though it’s not silly mortal stuff, Thor says it’s big deal, everyone stuff.”

“So science is your fickle mistress while your man is away playing save-the-galaxy.”

“I miss your help.”

“Aww Jane, fuzzy feelings! But your minions now can do all that math and crap in their heads that I couldn’t. You’re better off. Believe me.”

“I just worry about you.”

“I can only take so much concern and fuzzy stuff before I wonder if you know when I’m going to die or something.”

“Why would I know that?”

“Your boyfriend is an actual god. Don’t ask silly questions.”

* * * * *

Tuesday and Wednesday passed quickly enough; Darcy kept Pepper on schedule and only had to give a stern look to one accountant, which was an improvement from most weeks. Accountants were the worst - the entire accounting floor was a bunch of self-important douchecanoes. Scientists and engineers lost track of time and were apologetic for going over their time. Accountants knew they were going over time and tried it anyway because they felt they deserved it.

Thursday rolled around and instead of calmly reorganizing herself and making sure she was ready to go Friday, she just stacked her to-do in her inbox and changed into leggings and a shirt-dress and vest before coming back to her desk to shove her work clothes into a duffel.

“Hot date, Darcy?”

“Actually, yes, Judith.” she sassed.

“Good for you,” Judith gave her a small smile. “Have fun, sweetie.”

Pulling on her plum knit hat and running her lipstick over her lips, she grabbed her bag. “Thanks!”

She arrived at the Starbucks and didn’t see him anywhere, so she ordered her iced coffee and scanned the room for a couple of empty seats while she waited at the pick-up counter.

“Barty!” She grimaced and looked, and sure enough, that was her iced coffee. She reached for it and looked at the name on the cup for a second. She supposed ‘Darcy’ and ‘Barty’ sounded similar enough, but she didn’t think ‘Barty’ sounded like a girl’s name.

“Thinkin’ about me, doll?” She spun back around and came face to face with James. He was in a tight white shirt and a leather jacket and jeans and it was a damn crime.

“Hell-o James Dean.”

“Well at least you remembered my first name,” he looked at her strangely.

“Rocking the James Dean thing,” she gestured up and down with her coffee in hand.

“Thanks?”

“You do it justice. I approve.”

He laughed and reached past her, pressing his body to hers just enough for her to feel cool leather and warm cotton and get a good whiff of him - enough to set all her nerves on fire.

“Thanks,” he raised the cup to the barista, and she peered at his insulated cup with ‘James’ clearly written on it.

“Least they got your name right. Hi, I’m Barty,” she showed him her cup and he chuckled, turning towards the tables and resting his hand on her lower back to guide her towards a spot between two studious students.

“So, Darcy of Brooklyn, everything I know about you is food-related.”

“Well, James, formerly of Brooklyn, everything I know about you is related to your killer game.”

He touched his mouth as he looked down, smiling. “Okay. Okay, shot across the bow. You first, though.”

She set the venti iced coffee in front of her and leaned down over the giant green straw, taking a sip before considering what she might share. He was certainly straightforward, and she found she liked the opportunity to be forthright over the awkward silences and half-stilted conversation. “I am in a very serious relationship with my iPod, I love hats, and I miss the desert. Go.”

He chuckled and played at the same overexaggerated consideration. “I speak fourteen languages,” at her surprised eyebrow raise, he tacked on “because of my job. I hate e-readers, because real books are better. Annnnd. Hm. I really like Neil Degrasse Tyson.”

“Kismet, indeed. Real books are better. Neil is my hero, except I’m still mad at him about Pluto. And holy crap, what do you do that needs fourteen languages?! I’m sure mine would be easier with like, two or three. As it is, I speak passable broken Spanish.”

“Waking up and finding out there’s only eight planets instead of nine was weird.”

“I know, right?! I have that t-shirt that says ‘when I was your age, Pluto was a planet’.”

James let out a loud bark of laughter. “No kidding! Excellent.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I work private security. Takes me all over the world.”

Darcy leaned forward conspiratorially, and he leaned down towards her, eyes bright with amusement. “Are you a spy?” she whispered.

“Not anymore,” he whispered back and she leaned back and winked at him.

“I like how you roll, James Dean. So do you actually know deli dude, or was that just a beautiful meeting of one Russian to another?”

“I’m not actually Russian. Lived there for a few years on a job.”

“Your spy job.”

He smiled. “My spy job.”

“What’s your favorite place you’ve ever been?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t get to do a whole lot of sightseeing anywhere I went. If I had the chance, I think I’d go back to Italy. See the Colosseum, Saint Peter’s, all that.”

“Architecture nerd?”

He grinned, and she found she was quite fond of the apples of his cheeks. “Little bit.”

After hashing out feelings on banned books, summer reading lists, best travel destinations, and the unappealing idea of coffee processed through the digestive tract of an elephant, Darcy decided to cut out before they ran out of topics. She let James walk her back to the subway, all the way down to the platform, where her ride wasn’t scheduled to arrive for seven minutes.

“I’m not one for making it the dude’s job to say there should be a second date, so I’m saying I think we should do this again.”

“I like a dame who knows what she wants.”

“I like a fella who uses the word ‘dame’,” she laughed, closing the distance between them and looking up at him.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Makes me feel a bit old fashioned.”

“Well cookie, I’m awful keen on seein’ you again.”

She grinned. “How do you feel about the blue whale?”

He looked confused. “Not sure I follow, doll.”

“Museum of Natural History. I love the blue whale.”

“Well I haven’t been to the museum in years, so you’re going to have to show me what I’m missin’.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Can I call you?”

“I’m not really a phone person, but I’m pretty good with text.” She pulled out her phone. “What’s your number?” He recited it and she sent him text message that just read ‘Darcy aka Barty’. “There. Whenever you want to hit up the museum, just send me a text. I’m usually free on weekends.”

His phone must have vibrated, because he pulled it out of his pocket with his gloved hand. He smiled at the text and replied with a smile on his face.

“I can’t not ask, and you can not answer if I’m being totally uncouth, but what’s with the Michael Jackson one glove thing?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Injury I got in the service. Prosthetic I’m not crazy about showin’ off.”

“Oh. Sorry. That’s cool. Sorry.”

“No problem, babydoll. Surprised it took you this long to ask. I saw you starin’.”

“That wasn’t the only thing I was starin’ at,” she shot back, and pulled her phone back out to read his text: ‘Saturday?’ “You move fast, Casanova.”

“Lulu broad like you? Gotta snap you up before some sugar daddy rations ya.”

She grinned. “I have pretty much no idea what you just said.”

“Would it be too forward to ask for a kiss goodnight, doll?”

“Lay one on me, blue eyes.”

It was a quick press of his lips to hers, and he pulled away only a couple of inches before she tapped her lips. “Train’s almost here. Gonna need one for the road.”

The second kiss was the one she really wanted - the one that was several little open-mouthed kisses with the barest hint of tongue. She grabbed his jacket to hold him on task, and felt his hands settle on her hips as she reached up on tiptoe to meet him halfway. His lips were soft, practically plush with how gently they moved over hers, light pressure as though he was trying either very hard to not get carried away or was a terrible tease. She couldn’t decide which, as too many of her brain cells were transmitting exclamation points and not much else.

“Well now I’m embarrassed. I think we’re makin’ a scene,” he whispered, their noses still touching.

“Turns out I only don’t like PDA when it’s someone else,” she whispered back and closed the distance again.

She felt the change in the air before she heard the train, and pulled away reluctantly. “That’s my train.”

“Better let you go then.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeahhhh. I gotta go adult tomorrow, so as much as I want to make some ill-advised decisions right now, I’m going to do the right thing and let you go so I can get on my train.”

“You do that,” he replied, squeezing her hips and giving her another quick peck before spinning her away and pointing her towards the train as it pulled to a stop and the platform became a sea of people.

“We’ll figure out the museum.”

“See you soon, doll.”

She raised her arm and waved once behind her head as she was pulled into the amoeba of boarding and unloading passengers. She wasn’t able to find a seat, but she wrapped her arm around the pole near the door and looked back out the door to see him waggle the fingers of his ungloved hand at her just before the doors closed.

She couldn’t seem to wipe the silly grin off her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is the first of a small smattering of Bucky chapters, because I found a certain aspect of this plotline is best told from his perspective, due to the fact that Bucky knows folks Darcy doesn't. Yet. And this is still, foremost, about Darcy.
> 
> But because I had to get to a certain place before that could happen, this one got a little longer than usual.
> 
> Also, to soothe the hangry cravings for perogies instigated by the last chapter, look in your grocer's freezer for Mrs. T's frozen perogies. They're not like having a genuine Polish person make them for you, but when you need a fix, they're good stuff. I definitely bought a few boxes over the weekend because my already existing need for perogies as evidenced by the previous chapter was exacerbated by every comment that mentioned them again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky chapter.

He drove far above the recommended speed limit, weaving his bike through cars as he got out of the city. The drive back to the compound was an hour from Manhattan at posted speeds if there was no traffic. There was never no traffic. But posted speeds were for drivers with poorer reflexes and definitely poorer night vision. He acknowledged the recommendation and did as he pleased.

He parked his bike in the underground garage, and took the freight elevator up into the compound. Being forced to spend most of their waking hours together, those of the team that stayed in the compound dispersed after the last training session of the day. Wanda and Vision could often be found in the common room watching movies, but Steve, Sam, and Natasha would disappear into their own quarters. (Or everyone into theirs if it was poker night.) Rhodey hadn’t been on campus in weeks, Carol was off-planet and not expected back anytime soon, and Thor was back on Asgard doing his time as Heir Apparent, so it was unusually quiet.

Nothing could be heard from the common room as he walked past and pressed his thumb against the door console, unlocking the door. It was late, but Steve was still up, hunched over on the couch as he studied something on the coffee table, his iPod tuned into a radio station that was playing some old standards.

“Hey, where’d you disappear to?”

Bucky shrugged. “The city.”

“Oh,” Steve frowned. “You were just there a couple days ago.”

“Yep,” he headed towards his room.

“See Ilia again?”

“Nope.”

“Wow,” Steve followed him to his door, leaning on the jamb. “You’re chatty tonight.”

“Maybe I don’t need you checkin’ up on me.”

“Hey, whoa. I’m just askin’.” He paused. “You didn’t kill anybody, didja?” Bucky frowned at him, exasperated, and Steve held up his hands with a chuckle. “Just makin’ sure.”

“You waitin’ up for me?”

“Nah. Workin’ on some stuff for Coulson,” he thumbed over his shoulder, presumably towards the referenced paperwork.

“Nothin’ on the docket for Saturday, right?”

“Not that I know of. Why, you got a hot date?”

“Just thinkin’ about going into Manhattan to the museums.”

“You want some company?”

“’m good.”

“Alright then. I’ll probably be up all night with this mess. Music gonna bother you?”

“Nah.”

“Night, Buck.”

“Night Steve.”

“Night Wanda, Night Vision, Night Sam, Night Natasha,” Friday chirped, and they both looked up at the ceiling with identical frowns.

“Night Friday,” they chorused, and shared a look, Steve rolling his eyes a bit as he turned back towards the couch.

“You gotta stop watching the Waltons,” Bucky chastised, and like magic, the tense feeling that he had walked in with, his need to keep his activities secret, dissipated. He didn’t feel like unloading everything just yet, but he had walked in and seen Steve’s back and felt… threatened. He hadn’t felt that way in months - that trapped, tight feeling that he had to disgorge everything before it was all taken away; the mission debrief. This was Steve, who had been there every minute, and he never really considered until now that he might have been a little resentful of being handled. He was the one who let himself be found. He was the one who followed where Steve had led, right into this compound and into the lives of the Avengers. Sure, they bickered, had even thrown a few punches at each other in the early days, but he had never felt like Steve would force him to do something he really didn’t want to do before he walked through that door.

He wondered if he should apologize, but then he would have to come up with a reason he had been short, and he didn’t particularly want to get into any of that just yet. His recovery had progressed by leaps and bounds after the first couple of months - the months on his own had shaken free a lot of the locks, but Steve had flung open the doors, and he was grateful for it, but every time he had apologized, he felt like the asset again, ashamed of his actions and seeking penance. Steve had shaken him out of the constant apologizing early on, but now that he did something stupid he was fully cognizant of? He was going to have to bring that up with Sam - normal human beings apologized when they were dicks, and if he was going to have an episode every time he fucked up, well, it was a going to be a long damn life filled with people that hated him.

* * * * *

“Someone I know?”

Natasha lifted her chin at him from where she stood at the cutting board, slicing the potatoes paper thin for the scalloped potatoes. It was his turn to cook for “team night” (which they all mockingly called “family night”), but she showed up, and idle hands were handed knives.

“What?”

“That little smile,” she smirked. “Who’re you talking to?”

He slid the phone into his pocket. “Cat video.”

“Hm,” she raised a brow, but dropped the subject.

“You get that email from Maria?”

“You want in?”

“I’d like to run it, but Maria doesn’t trust me that much yet.”

“Have you said anything to her?” Bucky shrugged. “ _Ya nikogda ne znal vas stesnyat'sya._ ”

“ _Ne stesnyaytes'. Ona mne ne doveryayet yeshche dostatochno._ ”

“ _Vy ne doveryayete sebe. Tam raznitsa. Vy dolzhny pogovorit's ney. Skazhite yey, chto vy khotite._ ”

“ _Ona prava, vy znayete. Vy tsypochkakh._ ” Wanda offered, and Natasha smiled to herself as she gathered the thin coils of potato in her hands and carried them to the casserole dish.

“ _Nikto ne sprosil vas, devochka._ ” Bucky snarled, and Wanda just smiled. He only called her little girl when he was annoyed with her.

Sam walked into find Wanda looking pleased with herself, while Bucky whisked something to within an inch of its life, and he looked to Natasha for a clue.

“You guys alright in here?”

“Missed a chance to practice your accent, Sam,” Natasha teased.

“No, I heard the Cold War from outside. I don’t need to be a part of that. As long as we still outnumber you reds, freedom and justice will prevail.”

“If James is one of us,” Wanda smiled, “then we do outnumber you.”

“STEVE!” Sam shouted, and Wanda cackled, finally making Bucky crack a smile.

After dinner, Natasha cornered him on the couch.

“So. Tell me about your date.”

“Hm?” he flipped through an old National Geographic that was teaching him more about quasars and pulsars than he thought possible.

“Last night. Came back late, Steve said you went into the city, you smelled like women’s shampoo.”

He glanced over at her with slightly disgusted curl to his lip. “Where were you last night that you could _smell_ me?”

“You were distracted. You didn’t even see me. Sloppy. Answer the question.”

“I wasn’t aware you asked one.”

“James.”

“Na _tasha_.” It had taken him months to stop wanting to call her by her other name once the memories resurfaced.

“I’m going to find out. Either you tell me or I go snooping. I’m being gracious here.”

“You’re going to snoop anyway,” he turned back to his magazine, and she watched him for a moment.

“Yeah, but if I do that, she’ll find out who you are,” she prodded with a little smile, and broke out in a grin when he tensed slightly.

“So what. I’m allowed,” he couldn’t help but get defensive. She _would_ snoop, and unless something unexpected occurred, Darcy _wouldn’t_ actually find out, or even know, but… but.

“One last night, one tomorrow…” she sing-songed, and he threw his magazine on the cushion between them.

“Are you aware I have a very real paranoia issue? That I can’t be medicated for?” He pointed his finger in her face. “You’re pushing my buttons, _milaya_.”

“You were smiling when you were texting her before dinner,” she looked over his finger as though it didn’t even bother her.

He rose from the couch. “Now I’m not allowed to smile? You all had a pool to get me to do it for months. Don’t lie, I know you did.”

“When it’s Steve or Sam or Tony or Rhodey and you’re busting on each other, you grin. This was a _smile_. A sweet, smitten kitten smile,” she was teasing him, and part of him wanted to share, and the other part, the much larger part, didn’t want anyone to know about Darcy. He wanted one goddamn thing to be just his. Every part of his life belonged to them, and he wanted something of his own, just for a little while. 

He walked away from her - she’d won, but only because he had something to lose.

Saturday he got up early so he could meet her at the museum at ten. He ate his cereal, showered, and was half-dressed before Steve got back from the gym.

“Leaving already?”

He shrugged. Keeping a secret from Steve was pretty much the most frustrating thing he could’ve chosen to do. Natasha’s teasing the night before had him on high alert, and he knew he was being a shit again, but he couldn’t seem to help it.

“Wanted to get going early,” he said from the couch where he leaned over tying his boots.

Steve just ‘hmm’ed and turned to walk away. His anxiety deflated in one fell swoop as he heard Steve stop and turn back. Nothing to hide now. Natasha had squealed, like he knew she would, but hoped she wouldn’t. So much for that.

“You sure this is a good idea, Buck?”

“As opposed to what? Not a lot of dames waiting in line,” he muttered, finishing his laces and tucking them under, and turning to grab his black glove off the coffee table. He pulled it over his metal hand and tugged his long sleeve over his wrist so no matter how he rotated it, no glint of silver showed.

“Bucky,” Steve said with a defeated sigh.

He looked up sharply. “Don’t need any of your pity, punk.” He got up from the couch and headed towards the bathroom.

“It’s not pity, Buck. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“Everyone in this place is waiting for me to snap, and I’m going to do if I don’t get out of here every once in awhile.”

“No one is waiting for you to snap. They’ve all got their own problems. You’re not the only wild card on this team. And if they didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t’ve _put_ you on this team. They trust you, you just don’t trust them enough to believe it. Goes both ways.”

“Sam, is that you?” Bucky shot back. “You’re not my damn mother, Steve. Stop. I don’t need you to babysit me anymore. I’m a fully functional human fucking being, and if you’re more interested in tellin’ me I’m dangerous than in bein’ my friend, to hell with ya!” he shouted.

“Hey!” Steve shouted back. “I didn’t say _none_ of that! You gonna let me talk or you just gonna have this conversation all by yourself?”

When Bucky folded his arms over his chest and shrugged at him, lips pressed together, Steve continued.

“Okay. First of all, you’re lying to her, and that’s not okay.”

“I’m not lying. I’m being selective with the truth. It’s the second damned date, Steve. I ain’t asking her to marry me. I ain’t told her one untrue thing.”

“Oh yeah? She asked about your arm?”

“I told her it’s a prosthetic. From when I was in the service.”

“You mention you were in the service in 1944?”

“Nah, figured I’d save that for the third date.”

“How do you know she ain’t lyin’ to you?”

“About what?! You think she’s a HYDRA spy? I’m not a fucking idiot, and I wish you’d stop treating me like one.”

Steve inhaled through his nose and shook his head. “You’re trying to start a fight with me, and I’m about ready to give you one. Fine. Take her out, have your fun, and when she asks questions you can’t, or won’t, answer, don’t come cryin’ to me ‘cause you broke her heart.” Steve turned to leave, but Bucky’s words gave him pause.

“You forget. I’m good at this, Cap. I spent years pretending to be other people. Bein’ myself all the time ain’t no picnic, and sometimes I just like to pretend for a little while that I’m normal,” he said softly. “This isn’t a lifelong commitment. This is a second date with a swell dame who has no idea who the Winter Soldier is, and isn’t afraid of me or in awe of me. No expectations except a little fun.” He paused, and Steve looked at him, waiting. “I’m gone a lot, so this will end naturally without any hurt feelings. I wish you’d just be my friend instead of my keeper,” he finished quietly.

“I wish you could have a little bit of normal, Buck. I really do. I wish we all could. But you’re going to have to accept that normal hasn’t been in the cards for either of us for a long damn time, and pretendin’ otherwise is a fool thing to do. Have fun on your date.” Steve stalked into his room and shut the door with a slam.

Bucky stared at the closed door for awhile, trying to decide if he should apologize. But Steve always had a short fuse, and it was best if he let him cool off. He’d apologize when he got home.

Nine hours later, when he returned to the compound, he wasn’t in the mood to apologize.

They were standing around the couch, the television on, a few beers in hand, and he headed straight for Steve and hauled back and clocked him before anyone could react.

Steve reacted quickly enough, and the rest scattered. In the beginning, when something set him off, Steve was the only one allowed to try and calm him down. SOP was to move out of the area and if Sam wasn’t there, someone went to get him and the tranquilizers if they weren’t close to hand. Back then, they were always close to hand.

“What was that?!”

Bucky just glared at him, breathing heavily through his nose. “You had to go there this morning.”

“What?”

“And you!” He pointed to Natasha, who had not made herself scarce, and was watching them. “You had to get nosey! And you had to tell him!”

“Bucky! What are you talking about?” Steve was using the ‘calm down’ voice, and his breath hitched, his anger throbbing, but receding.

“You pissed me off this morning!”

“I piss you off a lot,” Steve countered. “I’ve been pissing you off since we were kids. What happened, Buck?”

“What happened?! I’ll tell you what happened! I almost flipped the switch in a goddamn public place!” His voice broke. “Filled with fucking kids, Steve. Families. Fuck!” he shouted, and there was nothing nearby to sweep off a table, nothing to throw, so he just collapsed to the floor. He sat there, shoulders pulled forward and looking for all the world like it hadn’t been over a year since he walked back into their lives, broken into jagged pieces.

Steve crouched in front of him and reached out to his shoulder, laying his palm there and stroking his thumb across his collarbone in a soothing rhythm.

“Bucky. You said ‘almost’.”

“Yeah.”

“So you didn’t.”

“No. Just,” he chuckled a little wetly, “freaked out my girl.”

“I’d say that’s pretty damn good, Buck,” Steve offered softly, tilting his head with a little smile on his face until he caught Bucky’s eye. “And if you’re still callin’ her your girl, she didn’t run off when you… freaked out?”

“No.”

“Pretty swell girl, sounds like.”

“Yeah,” Bucky smiled briefly. “But I can’t. I wanted to, but I can’t,” he shook his head.

“Can’t what?”

“I wanted to be James. Not Bucky, not the asset, not the Soldier, just James. And I can’t.”

“They’re not separate people,” Natasha offered, and he looked up, having forgotten she was there. “You are all of them. If you want it to be real, you can’t pretend you’re not.”

Bucky stared at her for a minute, thinking about hard-won compartmentalization, and how she was telling him to ditch it all for something ‘real’. He knew she was still stinging from the self-imposed separation from Banner, even though he was back at Stark Tower, so much closer than he’d been for years. She didn’t talk about it, but she was easy to read if one knew the language, and her language was one he had been fluent in once upon a time, and the knack never quite went away.

“Yeah,” he agreed, looking away, and then back up at Steve. “Get off me you big girl,” he shrugged Steve’s hand off his shoulder.

“Says the guy who watches every single ‘Good Witch’ movie on Lifetime,” Steve teased as he rose, offering Bucky his arm to get off the floor. Bucky took it, snorting with amusement and rubbing the heel of his hand across his eyes, making his eyelashes clump with unshed tears.

“She’s nice to look at.”

“That’s not the only reason you watch them.”

“Prove it.”

Steve rolled his eyes and clapped Bucky on the shoulder, then pulled him close, hugging him tightly for a moment. “Come on Casanova, I’ll get you a beer and you can tell me about your girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this one got monstrous - I wanted to glimpse a bit of Bucky and highlight how much he's healed and how he's still got a ways to go. The second date was supposed to be in this chapter, but it just got out of hand, so the date will be a shorter chapter that you'll also get this week rather than next Tuesday per usual, since they really were meant to be a single chapter. Stay tuned.
> 
> Russian translations:
> 
> Ya nikogda ne znal vas stesnyat'sya. - I've never known you to be shy.
> 
> Ne stesnyaytes'. Ona mne ne doveryayet yeshche dostatochno. - Not shy. She doesn't trust me enough yet.
> 
> Vy ne doveryayete sebe. Tam raznitsa. Vy dolzhny pogovorit's ney. Skazhite yey, chto vy khotite. - You don't trust yourself. There's a difference. You should talk to her. Tell her what you want.
> 
> Ona prava, vy znayete. Vy tsypochkakh. - She's right, you know. You tiptoe.
> 
> Nikto ne sprosil vas, devochka. - No one asked you, little girl.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky chapter - the date.
> 
> WARNING: Anxiety attack described within. Anyone sensitive to that should be aware.

He tried to shake off his tiff with Steve as he drove into the city. It was a stupid fight, because it was stupid to even keep it a secret, and he couldn’t really decide why he thought being secretive about it was so important. It wasn’t a coffee clutch of relationship deconstruction - they rarely spoke of Steve’s relationship with Maria, no one asked Natasha how she felt about Banner being back in Stark Tower, nothing was said about Wanda and Vision being attached at the hip. Well, okay, that was a lie - Tony had an unhealthy need to know how that ‘worked’ when Vision was not actually human. And still sounded like his AI.

They worked as a team, but for the most part, they tended to leave each other alone.

There had been no reason to think his relationship with Darcy was any different. Steve would still have had that conversation with him about keeping secrets, but maybe it wouldn’t’ve been shouting. Natasha would still have teased him, but maybe he would’ve been able to _talk_ to her about it. He’d isolated himself from productive conversations - something he’d been working on with Sam. He had been so dependant on everyone else for so long that when he managed to stand on his own two feet, he’d pushed everyone else away, and they were still skirting his boundaries, trying to find out where they would be allowed back in.

Damn, he could be own therapist.

He found a spot to park his bike near Central Park, and walked to the 81st Street entrance of the Museum of Natural History to meet Darcy.

“Hey handsome,” she greeted him, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to slip an arm around her waist and give her a sweet, public-friendly kiss.

“Hey doll,” he smiled, and she smiled back up at him.

“I already got our tickets for the planetarium show.”

“You takin’ me out, then?”

“Well you said it’d been awhile. I’m helping recapture your youth.”

“If we’re going to do that, we’re going to have to go to Coney Island.”

“Never been,” she slipped her arm through his and he opened the door to the museum, looking up at the bright skylights and the brightly colored signage directing them to whatever their hearts desired.

“Never been to Coney Island?! How long you lived in Brooklyn and you never been to Coney Island?”

“Only about six months, don’t disown me,” she joked, and pulled him towards the right into the Hall of North American Animals, dominated by large mammals in dioramas. “The planetarium shows are every half hour, so we can come back to it whenever. Last time I was here, my mom and I went to a show narrated by Robert Redford - not sure if she was more excited about that or the actual show.”

They meandered through the Northwest Coast Indians, the Hall of Human Origins, and into the Hall of Meteorites.

“So what brought you to New York?”

“Job,” she shrugged one shoulder. “Head-hunted into corporate servitude.”

“Where from?”

“Vegas.”

“Bright light city.”

“Yep. More like never-gets-totally-dark desert. Vegas smells like cigarettes, vomit, and broken dreams.”

He laughed. “I didn’t know broken dreams had a smell.”

“They definitely do. What about you,” she nudged his arm with her shoulder. “You said you just do some work here?”

“Yeah. Private security. Corporate office is downtown, so I come back every few weeks between jobs.”

“Oh,” she sounded a little disappointed. “So where do you put down roots?”

“Got a place upstate I crash in, but I travel a lot.”

“Hmm. Sounds like fun.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s not so fun, but it is what it is.”

“Yeah. Your family still in Brooklyn?”

“Parents are long gone, but they’re still there, yeah.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it was awhile ago. I go visit them now and then, but I’m not sore about it anymore.”

“My parents are still in Vegas. I haven’t seen them since I moved. Probably go home for Christmas, but it’s not exactly convenient to see them.”

“You close with them?”

“Sorta? I mean, yeah, I guess. I don’t know.”

He laughed softly. “You don’t know?”

“Some of the stuff I used to do isn’t exactly stuff I can talk about with them, so we do this thing where we pretend we’re closer than we are in an attempt to ignore the fact that I can’t tell them stuff.”

“Sounds like you’re the one with the spy job.”

“Nah. Just government science.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Well, not anymore. I used to work for an astrophysicist.”

“Wait, you’re an astrophysicist? Why you working corporate?”

She barked a laugh. “I am _so_ not a science genius. I used to work for one. Science minion. I live with her now, but she’s not my boss anymore. I know enough to get me by, but nowhere near enough to actually converse with one.”

“How’d you end up working for one if that’s not your deal?”

“Needed some gen ed credits, and apparently I was the only applicant to be her fetch-monkey. It was pretty cool. Met some pretty awesome people. But when the government takes an interest in your weirdo science, all of sudden there are NDAs.”

“Ah.”

“I mean, signing them meant I got to do a really lot of cool stuff, but it also means I can only allude to the specifics.”

“Army, doll. I know all about it.”

“Yeah. And private security can’t be all that open or it wouldn’t be private.”

“You got it.”

“How long were you in the army?”

“While.”

“What’d you do?”

“Sniper.”

“Cool! Like, green berets stuff?”

He laughed. “Yeah. Special forces stuff. Worked with a team to do some pretty interesting shit that I can’t tell you about,” he winked.

“You know, it’s kind of awesome that you get that. When I tell dudes I can’t tell them, they think I’m keeping secrets for fun or something. Like, no, dude, I will get arrested if I tell you. And it won’t be jumpsuited white-collar prison, but probably some basement in Area 51 or something, and they’ll tell my parents I was in a horrific car accident.”

“We’ll have to compare security clearances sometime,” he ventured, and she looked up at him, her eyes sparkling.

“Oh yeah.” she leered.

He chuckled and leaned down, kissing her gently, keeping it family friendly as he slid his hand over her jaw and under the mound of curls that escaped her knit hat. “Looking forward to it.”

“You and me both, soldier.”

He laughed, and she suddenly shouted “yes!” and tugged at his hand.

She pulled him towards a vending machine near the entrance to the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life. It was large and glass with a bright silver claw.

“Dippin’ Dots?”

“Oh my GOD,” she gushed. “Do you not know the wonder that is the future?”

He just grinned as she pulled her messenger back around to her front and rummaged through it for cash. “Um, apparently not.”

“This is the future,” she gestured with a five dollar bill. “You are going to eat this and know what the future tastes like.”

“If you say so,” his eyes brightened at her enthusiasm.

“I do. I haven’t had this stuff in _years_. It’s _awesome_. Cookies and cream or strawberry?”

“What _is_ it?”

“Astronaut ice cream, except not freeze-dried, it’s like, SCIENCE. It’s the future. Ice cream. Future ice cream.”

“Strawberry.”

“Kay,” she selected two flavors, and inserted another dollar, watching the claw hold a cup into which a pipe spewed tiny colored spheres. The first cup, filled with pink nodules, dropped down, and she plucked it out, handing it to him and grabbing a spoon out of the dispenser. “Here, try it.”

He scooped the little beads with his spoon and eyed them with suspicion.

“Go on! I promise it’s awesome,” she took out her own and shucked the spoon out of the plastic wrap, diving into hers. “Oh my god,” she said around the mouthful. “This is just as good as I remember.”

He put the spoon in his mouth, and felt the cold little spheres dissolve with a burst of flavor that spread across his tongue, creamy just like the real stuff. A second spoonful filled his mouth and he nodded at her as she grinned up at him.

“Okay, this is pretty good. Way better than the ice cream in MREs.”

“Astronaut ice cream?”

“I’m pretty sure astronauts eat better than MREs.”

“That’s those little ‘everything-you-need-in-one’ things right?”

“Yeah. Military standard rations.”

“So, pretty gross.”

“When I was in the service they were pretty bad. Creative, but not anything like the real thing. It was better when they didn’t try so hard.”

“I met a guy once that loved ‘em.”

Bucky made a face. “No foolin’?”

She shook her head and put her spoon back in her mouth for another bite. “Met him when I was travelling with my old boss. She was, well, _is_ pretty famous, so far as astrophysicists go. So I met other physicists. They’re a nutty bunch. This guy was a giant dick, because he read her papers and wrote these scathing rebuttals, and now he’s got nothing to say. Insists his NDAs keep him from proving he’s right and she’s wrong. But she’s the one on the lecture circuit. He’s a sore loser,” she asserted, and nodded her head towards the Hall entrance. “Blue whale. Let’s go sit under her and enjoy our future,” she gestured with her ice cream.

They found a prime spot, and sat next to each other, finishing their treats. He looked up at the massive whale hanging from the ceiling. “Pretty impressive.”

“Right? You done with your ice cream? It gets even better.”

He was more than a little smitten by her enthusiasm. “Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah.” She took his empty cup and stacked it with hers and looked around briefly before lying down supine on the giant mat. “Lie down.”

“If you wanted to cuddle doll, you could’ve just asked.”

“Cuddle with me under the blue whale. I wanna show you something.”

He smirked and laid down next to her, and put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She smelled wonderful, her body warm and soft.

“Look up,” she said softly, and he did.

The view from where they lay was the belly of the whale, and a tiny window far above them of mottled blue glass made it look like they were underwater. The sun hit the window, and the “water” above them seemed to move.

He closed his eyes against the assault of images and sounds.

_”They’ve had a lot of success with this in those underwater mining operations. You breathe liquid in the womb, you know. You just have to let your body remember.”_

_He remembered the pink liquid, slightly viscous instead of like water, and the feeling of drowning, of struggling to get oxygen into his lungs instead of liquid._

_“Breathe, Soldier. Let it in.”_

_“You sure this stuff is legit?”_

_“It’s much safer than the formula we were using before. Should be less tissue damage. Shorter recovery time when he comes back out.”_

_He couldn’t stop choking._

He inhaled sharply, aware she was speaking to him, but the words didn’t make sense.

_”Hit him again, damn it!”_

_The shock made his muscles seize, but he couldn’t let them put him back in. Not again. Not again._

_“Into the tube! Into the tube!”_

His breathing was shallow, like he couldn’t take a deep breath, even though his lungs were expanding to full capacity.

_”Ihn zurückzuhalten!”_

_“Nicht schießen!”_

_“Schließen Sie die Tür! Schließen Sie die Tür!”_

_It was so cold, so cold._

He began to shiver, and the light was too bright, and he had to leave, he had to get out, he had to leave.

He leapt up from the mat, and headed for the exit, hearing her call after him, but it wasn’t important. He had to get out.

He leaned against the cool tile between the restrooms, choking on his own breath, crying out in little whimpers.

“Hey. Five things, James. One thing you can hear, James, listen to my voice, you can hear my voice. One thing you can see, look at me, James, open your eyes, you can see me,” he flicked his eyes up to hers, but they wouldn’t focus properly. “One thing you can touch, that tile, feel that? It’s probably pretty cool, right? One thing you can smell, um… oh man, there it is, that restroom deodorizer, you can smell that, right?”

He nodded, and looked down as she repeated herself, helping him focus on the sound of her voice, on her sneakers against the floor as he looked down, the tile under his arm, the smell of deodorizer. He gulped down air, breathing hard through his mouth, then closing it and concentrating on breathing through his nose in deep breaths. He closed his eyes and took several breaths, opening his eyes and looking up at her with a long exhale.

“Hey, there you are,” she smiled. “How you doin’?” she asked softly.

He stared at her a second, searching her eyes, and all he found was concern laced with apprehension. No fear, no recrimination. He lunged towards her, taking her face in his hands, and kissed her - definitely not in the family-friendly way. She startled under his hands, but warmed to the idea fairly quickly, sliding her hands under his open leather jacket and pulling him close. He pulled away from her lips, and closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to hers.

“Thank you.”

“No, thank _you_ ,” she sassed back. “You can attack me with your mouth anytime. No objections from this corner, not at all,” she licked her lips, and he went back for another taste.

He could taste the vanilla and chocolate from her ice cream, and her soft velvety tongue as it slid along his into his mouth and beckoning his past her lips. His hands left her face, dropping down her back and he pulled her bodily into him, wrapping his arms around her body to hold her close. He felt her fingers dig into the back of his tshirt, and felt her breasts squash against his chest. He slid one arm down her back, palming her ass through her jeans, and she nipped his lip with a little hum. He nibbled back, and moved his lips to her neck, just under her ear, pressing her against his body, before he was startled by a hand tapping his shoulder and a cleared throat from behind him.

“Take it elsewhere, folks,” the museum security guard raised a brow at them in disapproval, and she let out little squeak of embarrassment, burying her face in his shirt.

“Yeah, sorry,” he pulled her into his side and walked towards the signs for the planetarium show.

They walked quickly in silence for several seconds.

“Oh-em-gee. Well, I think that’s pretty much the most embarrassed I’ve ever been.”

He looked down at her. “You’re blushing all the way up,” he nodded at the red flush across the chest of her v-neck shirt that went up her neck and spread across her face like a rash.

“Holy crap. Oh man.”

He chuckled. “Sorry.”

“Sorry? I’m not sorry, not at all.”

“Sorry we got caught?”

“Yeah. Okay. That. Oh look, the show is about to start. Let’s go sit in the dark theatre so I can stop blushing.”

“What makes you think a dark theatre is going to stop you blushing?” He smirked.

“We are not doing anything inappropriate in the planetarium. It’s against my religion.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Definitely, yes,” she presented their tickets to the kid at the door and found seats inside. The lights dimmed and the projection spread across the ceiling, and they leaned their seats back.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said quietly.

“Someday we’ll talk about how you ain’t got nothing I haven’t seen before.”

He pressed his lips together and stretched his arm out over her shoulders, pulling her in and pressing a kiss to her temple. “Thanks, dollface.”

“No problem, James,” she patted his leg with her hand, and stroked his thigh softly. “We all have demons. Some visit more often than others.”

“Yeah,” he replied quietly, and pulled her as close as he could in their seats. She laid her head against his chest, and he knew he was in real danger of falling for this girl. The feeling was soaring, elating... and utterly terrifying. He squeezed her shoulder and looked up at the stars racing across the ceiling, and felt small. The universe was supposed to make a man feel insignificant, and there were days he felt it keenly. Today, he felt the weight and weightlessness of being important - and it clashed with the idea that he was still dangerous, could still hurt those around him, but for a sometimes tenuous grasp on himself. Sam would be proud of his revelations, he was sure of it. All he felt was bittersweet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple of shout-outs here to other pop culture standards (two particular favorites, actually) - cookies to whomever found them :)
> 
> It was important to me that this date was from Bucky's POV, and we'll be moving back to Darcy POV starting with the chapter next Tuesday (at which point will resume the regular Tuesday updates rather than twice/week. I'm only two-three chapters ahead at any given time, so more than once/week isn't ideal, though I do love hearing from you all when chapters hit a note with you).
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's been reading (and commenting) - I love sharing this ship with you all :)
> 
> German translations:
> 
> Ihn zurückzuhalten! - restrain him!
> 
> Nicht schießen! - don't shoot!
> 
> Schließen Sie die Tür! Schließen Sie die Tür! - close the door! close the door!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Darcy chapters.

“Hi Darce,” Bruce looked up from his tablet when she entered the lab, but Jane remained oblivious.

“Hey. You don’t take any days off either?”

“I was just going to sit in my apartment and do work anyway. Might as well come in,” he shrugged.

“Yeah, but at home you don’t have to put on pants.”

He let out a soft chuckle. “You sound like Tony.”

“Yikes. Don’t tell my boss, she’ll disown me.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“How long has she been in the zone?” she thumbed over at Jane.

“She might have acknowledged me with a grunt when I started making noise, but…”

“Yeah. Figures,” Darcy looked over at Jane, who was looking back and forth between two computer screens, eyes darting back and forth as she took her pencil out from between her teeth and scribbled something down, then shoved it into her ponytail. “Hey Jane!”

“Unh?” Jane didn’t even look, just acknowledged the use of her name.

“Acknowledging grunt?” Darcy looked at Bruce, and he smiled.

“Acknowledging grunt,” he agreed.

“Earth to Jane Foster,” Darcy said a little louder, crossing her arms over her chest, but not moving towards the computers. Experience taught her that when startled, Jane had dangerous kinetic potential, and there was a cup of coffee near the computers well within the danger zone.

“Just a sec’.”

Darcy pressed her lips together and watched her for several seconds before turning back to Bruce.

“I was thinking about getting sushi for dinner. You want?”

“Where from?”

“The place over on West 43rd.”

“I like that place.”

“I know, that’s why I asked. I was going to ask,” she turned towards Jane again, and spoke louder, “Jane Foster if she wanted food,” she turned back to Bruce, “but obviously science takes precedence. I’m going to just order what she usually eats and put it in front of her. Instinct dictates that she will insert the food into her mouth when it is placed in front of her.”

“I think she’s got some food over there that instinct did not win over.”

“She never finishes her Pop Tarts,” Darcy glanced over to Jane’s work station again. “How long ago?”

“Couple days.”

“So gross. She hides it under paperwork so the cleaners can’t find it. Ugh.” Darcy moved over to Jane’s station and began carefully rifling under paperwork until she found a half-eaten Pop Tart on a cheap plastic plate and a cup of coffee with cream that was starting to head towards mold. She also found a granola bar wrapper and two empty packages of fruit snacks. She gathered all the detritus and the sound of the crinkling wrappers finally got Jane’s attention.

“Hey Darcy! When did you get here?”

Darcy looked over the top of Jane’s computers at Bruce, who just shook his head with a smile. “Been here a few minutes. You really gotta let the cleaning crew do their job, Janie. They’re afraid to touch all your papers, but this,” she held up the coffee cup and the wrappers and the half-eaten food, “is gross.”

“Yeah. Sorry,” Jane at least looked contrite. She always did, though. It wasn’t out of malice that they ended up with bugs in most of the places they worked until Darcy decided to be proactive about cleaning up after her. Jane’s genius made her both forgetful and emotionally stunted, neither of which Darcy particularly held against her; they were merely not hills she was willing to die on. Jane was the way she was, and Jane needed a keeper, and for better or worse, Darcy was that keeper most days. They were a science-infused version of the Odd Couple. Darcy was by no means a Felix, and neither was Jane an Oscar, but there was definitely an empathetic connection with Felix that Darcy embraced.

“I’m going to get sushi. You want some?”

“Yeah, yes. It’s been awhile since breakfast.”

“You haven’t eaten since breakfast?!”

“No?”

“Jane. It’s almost five. You skipped lunch?”

“Yes?”

“Alright. Here, have some astronaut food,” she dug a shiny packet out of her messenger bag and handed it over.

“Oh thanks! Yeah, how did your museum date go?”

“You went out on a date?” Bruce asked, peeking up over his computers.

“Yes, Bruce. I do actually go out on dates.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, just… you know, good for you.”

Darcy smiled. “I know, I’m just messin’ with ya. Have to take breaks from work sometime, otherwise I’ll forget what being a workaholic is actually supposed to be for.”

Bruce looked contemplative for a moment, but Darcy didn’t know what that was about - he certainly didn’t talk about his personal life. She’d seen a bit of it on TV, everyone had, but they kept the small talk light. He didn’t wear a ring, so she was fairly certain he wasn’t married, but beyond that? They weren’t that close.

“So ninja hipster is still on your good list?”

“Janie, you know I’ve got high standards. Really great kisser, but I don’t know if it’s going to last.”

“What? Why not?”

“His job takes him everywhere, he’s gone for long periods of time…”

“That’s not a hurdle you can’t overcome,” Jane inserted firmly, and it dawned on Darcy what she’d said.

“No, of course not. But he’s got some baggage.”

“And you don’t?”

“Everyone does. I just got this feeling, you know? But I’ll take what I can get. He is a _really_ good kisser.”

“Wait, you’re dating a ninja?” Bruce walked over, involving himself in their small talk again.

“He does private security. He dresses like, military casual. The black cargo pants and the boots and just mixes in the white tshirts and leather jacket like he is a military motorcyclist.”

“Darcy thinks he’s a ninja.”

“I said I bet he’s cut, like a ninja. Secretly cut, but hides it, like Bruce here,” she thumbed over at Bruce, who looked down at himself in his rumpled button-up shirt and looked slightly embarrassed.

“Yoga,” he offered.

“I gotta do yoga, man.”

“It’s nice. We’ve got a class we do here a couple nights a week.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We meet in the gym.”

Darcy just stared at him for a moment. “I practically live here and I have never been to the gym. I should use the gym.”

“You should. It’s nice.”

“I think Pepper has her own gym.”

“They do. Tony doesn’t share well.”

“I’ve never met the guy, but somehow I already got that impression.”

Bruce chuckled. “He’s a handful, but he’s good people.”

“Jane wishes he would come up and help out with her bifrost machine.”

“Darcy!”

“Jane. It’s true. You could do Asgardian booty calls if you stablized it. Haven’t you been talking about how a stable wormhole is just out of reach? Another genius isn’t going to hurt the process.”

“Tony gets a little… carried away,” Bruce offered carefully, removing his glasses and fiddling with them. “But if you really want his help…”

“I’m working on about nine other things, so the bifrost gets bumped to the bottom of the list,” Jane offered sadly.

“I can say something to him.”

“I don’t want any special favors, but if he even has some time to look at my equations, I’d like his input. Mechanical engineering is really not my thing, so I’m picking it up as I go…”

“And that’s his bread and butter.”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. I’m going to go get sushi,” Darcy broke in. “If we’re going to need enough for four, you have until I get there to text me,” she waved her phone in front of them. “Though, seriously, if you love me at all, do not interrupt my boss’s special alone time. She’s a goddess and I worship her, but if she’s in a pissy mood because you made Tony make asshole choices, I will get my revenge.”

“Noted,” Bruce said with a little smile, fiddling with his glasses again.

“I’m not kidding.”

“I believe you,” Bruce nodded somberly, and Darcy hefted her messenger bag back up and headed towards the door in search of food.

* * * * *

“Darcy, could you come in here please?”

Donna poked her head out of Pepper’s office and Darcy grabbed her tablet and stylus and went as beckoned. Pepper’s appointment was interdepartmental, and only listed on her schedule as “S.R.” It was one of the only appointments Pepper ever made herself, and Darcy knew better than to question it, instead moving around everything else when the slot was double-booked against a call with a medical equipment company in Idaho.

Her customary seat at the front right when she entered the office was taken. The occupant rose when she entered and turned to face her with a smile.

Captain fucking America.

God bless Levi and Strauss. Or whomever made khakis that fit like that.

She reined in her id and tried to wipe the starry out of her eyes when she caught Donna’s little smile.

“Darcy, I would like you to meet a dear friend of mine, Captain Rogers,” Pepper introduced him with a smile.

“Steve,” he held out his hand for Darcy to shake, and it was dry and warm and just the right pressure. If Thor was California-surfer good lookin’, Steve Rogers was Iowa-cornfed-farmer good lookin’. She pulled her professionalism over her like a snuggie, and put her ovary explosion on hold.

“Darcy Lewis.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Lewis.”

“Darcy is currently running my schedule and travel itineraries, but I’ve been thinking about her for this since we talked.”

Darcy looked at them all in turn, brows raised in confusion.

“Have a seat, Darcy,” Pepper gestured to her to sit in the other chair. She’d never sat in the other chair. Donna winked at her and left the office. She was never alone in the office with Pepper. Not that she was alone, but. Still.

“Captain Rogers is the leader of the Avengers Initiative, as I’m sure you know.”

“Yes ma’am,” Darcy defaulted to formal language she hadn’t used with Pepper in months.

“Stark Industries has been the sole source of funding for the Avengers Initiative since the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D, and we’ve been exploring some other avenues for funding and support, because, among other things, as I’m sure you’ve seen, collateral damage is…” Darcy saw Steve shift uncomfortably. “... part and parcel of what they do. Stark Industries cannot be the sole financial support ad infinitum. Your work with Outreach and the Relief Foundation as well as several other departments and your background made you an ideal candidate. Steven and I discussed this well before I hired you, and when I mentioned other opportunities in the future, this is what I had in mind.”

Steve sat up in his chair and broke in. “The Maria Stark Foundation is the hub of Stark Industries’ non-profit ventures. The Relief efforts and some of the Outreach projects benefit from a combination of SI and Foundation funding. The Avengers Initiative has been drawing a great deal from the Foundation since the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D, and there are some untapped opportunities. The Initiative is not part of Stark Industries, but it was part of S.H.I.E.L.D. After the collapse, we were forced to become independent, which has come with its own… challenges. What’s left of the real S.H.I.E.L.D is funding itself and not much else - there are still very real threats that keep S.H.I.E.L.D underground instead of the openly funded government organization it used to be. But without S.H.I.E.L.D, and through them, the United States government, to support us, we’re…” he looked away, clearing his throat, “we need alternate sources of funding.”

Darcy nodded along, not quite sure what this had to do with her.

“Where you come in, Darcy,” Pepper offered, clearly bailing Steve out, “is that Stark Industries needs a liaison to work with the Foundation and with SI and the Initiative to organize an inflow of capital. Maria Hill, our Director of Security, is also our S.H.I.E.L.D liaison with regards to finding work for the Avengers in-between major world crises. Those missions are underutilized opportunities for funds from the federal governments which they serve.” Pepper paused, smiling. “Time to put that degree to use.”

Darcy didn’t say anything for several seconds, processing this idea, her brain lighting up with other ideas. “Well. I can’t say you don’t keep me on my toes.”

Pepper chuckled airily. “It won’t be an immediate and total transition. Steven and Maria will bring you up to speed over the course of the next couple of months. At that point, when you are ready to step into the role more completely, I hope you’ll have trained your replacement. Now that I have you, I’m not ready to give you up so easily. And Judith would probably murder me if I gave her back your stuff.”

“Maria and I meet every week, crisis notwithstanding,” Steve said to her, rising from his chair. She stood as well, because it felt weird to be sitting while he was standing. “I’ll have to, uh, ask her to add you to the meeting appointment. I don’t know how to do that,” he rubbed the back of his neck, flushing a little.

“I can add myself. She never has to know,” Darcy smiled.

“Alright then. I’ll see you on Thursday, Miss Lewis.”

“Sure thing. Do I call you Captain Rogers? Or Mr. Rogers? Mr. Rogers is weird, but I’ll get over it. Or get you a sweater-vest.”

“Steve is just fine, Miss Lewis,” he smiled at her, and held out his hand again for her to shake. She complied, and he nodded at Pepper. “Ms. Potts.” He let himself out of the office, and Darcy just stood there, in a state of mild shock.

“Well. Wow. Just. Wow.”

Pepper chuckled softly. “Yeah.”

“It’s like he doesn’t even _know_.”

“Refreshing, right?” Pepper agreed. “And it’s all real. I don’t think he has a dishonest bone in his entire body.”

“I’m going to have to make friends in Accounting, aren’t I?”

“Networking is going to be important.”

“Yeah, but. _Accounting_. You know how I feel about those people.”

“You’ll work it out.”

“Lie back and think of world peace?”

Pepper laughed in her throat. “Whatever works.”

“Yeah. Okay. Well. Bracing start to my day. You’ve got that teleconference with Chicago in ten,” she reminded Pepper, checking the time on her watch, which was connected to her computer and all of Pepper’s schedules.

“Goody.”

“I knew you’d be excited.”

“You’re going to be his Donna, you know that, right?”

“There are worse things to aspire to than to be Captain America’s gal Friday.”

Pepper smiled at her, and Darcy took her leave, sliding back into her chair at her desk and pulling up the departmental schedules. Apparently Maria _would_ know Darcy was inviting herself, as, unlike most of the department heads, Darcy’s self-invite had to be approved. Her finger hovered over the ‘send invite request’ prompt for a second, and she clicked it.

She had finished color-coding Pepper’s schedule for next week, preparing the file to be sent out to the department heads, when her scheduling program pinged her back that her invite request was approved. It was automatically added to her calendar. She never had meetings for herself - working with Lauren had been entirely through email. She checked Pepper’s schedule to make sure she was still able to fulfill her normal job function around the first of what were apparently many “Sec-Init Admin” meetings which had inserted themselves into her schedule for the next six months, according to her calendar. Oh goody, the repeated occurrence function.

She slipped her phone out of her bag to check for messages, and her heart surged at seeing the single unread message.

_James: Sorry have to cxl tmorrow. Rain check?_

The surge crashed hard. She couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Two dates, and she was developing expectations. Bad move, Lewis.

 _Totally._ She typed back. _Work?_

_James: Yeah. Opportunity couldn’t pass up. Forgive me?_

She smiled. _Forgiven. Text me when you get back?_

_James: Out of country for couple wks. Dinner when I get back?_

_Done._

_James: ;)_

She didn’t reply, and slid the phone back into her bag. She hovered between ‘all’s well that ends well’ and ‘it’s only two weeks’ and settled somewhere around ‘cautious optimism’. She was no stranger to the convenient excuse that was put into place to ensure feelings were as uninjured as possible in ending a non-relationship dating acquaintance. Hell, she’d done it herself once or twice. And as the museum incident made clear: he had stuff. It was probably better not to get involved. 

Though to be fair, she had stuff. She’d taken years to get her stuff under control; she had no idea what set him off, but there had been no indicator of it before that moment. She certainly couldn’t expect someone to be understanding of her mostly-under-control issues (that definitely could surface at any given time) if she couldn’t be understanding of theirs, right? Right. Equality of mental illness empathy. Or something. And he got the secrets thing. That was huge. Other guys she’d dated (oh so briefly) had tried to make a game out of it, out of trying to guess or trying to make her tell. So much of her recent life was tied up in little secrets she couldn’t share that they got upset like she was purposefully being coy. It was annoying. She was definitely curious about his secrets, but liked that he didn’t think it was a big deal to have them.

Also in the pro column, he was attractive, funny, smart… and she was comfortable around him. That feeling after meeting again at the deli, that he was comfortable in his own skin and wasn’t looking for her to fill a gap, that he wanted her, rather than needed her, was refreshing. He didn’t come off as desperate to find “the one”, nor did he seem to be playing her as one of many. He was attracted to her, and didn’t seem to have any qualms about showing it. If she believed in fairy godmothers, she would’ve thought her fairy godmother knew he was just what she was looking for.

Taking him at his word, he still wanted to see her again - it was a vague rescheduling, but not the open-ended promise of “I’ll call you when I get back” without any indicator of how long that might be. And he escalated their coffee date to dinner - that showed promise, rather than fear that she'd seen his stuff in technicolor. There was no sense in getting worked up about unfulfilled expectations or missed opportunities until she was sure they really were missed or unfulfilled.

Inhaling deeply, she pushed it out of the forefront of her mind and focused on work.

She was starting to wonder if Jane and her science submergence while Thor was off being a space prince didn’t make a very valid point - work would take her mind off of whatever she needed it to; and right now, she needed it to. 

And good things had happened today. Very good things. The universe was smiling on Darcy Lewis - it was time to run with that for all it was worth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several folks have expressed curiosity about who/how much of the crew Darcy already knows (in person) - this chapter should cover the who (Jane, Thor, Bruce, Pepper). As for the rest, it's hearsay, media coverage, gossip, and friends-of-friends. In her professional role at Stark Industries, I can't see that she would meet or know most of the rest of them. (Though that's obviously changing.) Tony is a different matter - Pepper has a vested interest in keeping personal and professional separate, so while I imagine Tony is not an unfamiliar topic of conversation, they have yet to meet. Though, in the manner of those you have heard a great deal about to the point of FEELING like you know them, I don't imagine their meeting will be fraught with tension or starry-eyed wonder.
> 
> Also, Steve taking on a greater chunk of the administrative duties of the Avengers is canon. After other stuff happens, but technically canon. So I'm embracing embracing-the-desk-job!Steve. The Maria Stark Foundation is from a canon-AU (seriously comics, wtf) storyline, but there have been enough indicators about SI's diverse for-profit and non-profit interests that I'm adopting that too. Finally, the bit about the Avengers not able to rely on Tony's money forever is both canon and just plain obvious - it's a damn good thing they already had their fingers in a lot of pies when Tony decided to put the weapons business out to pasture.


	9. Chapter 9

Arriving in the Security offices of Stark Industries, Darcy tried to keep her cool. She was definitely calm-cool, but her professional-cool was another story entirely. Two days earlier, she had been handed the reins of the most visible superhero organization on the planet. Well, theoretical reins. It wasn’t like she was going to be running ops for them or anything. (The thought made her pause in the middle of the hallway. She couldn’t even use her degree for that. That was something else entirely.)

“Excuse me,” a nameless suit sidled past her, breaking her out of her mildly terrifying reverie.

She reminded herself that “underqualified” was pretty much her modus operandi, and she had not only survived, but _thrived_. Still. Being a superhero secretary (she briefly considered Janine from the _Ghostbusters_ ) and running superhero missions was not quite the same thing.

The small lobby of the Security Administration Offices was set up similarly to the one she was familiar with - it housed four cubicles to the three in the same space as the CEO lobby, three offices (without grand frosted glass walls) in the space of Pepper’s, and a single office along what, in the CEO lobby was the infamous “art wall” (pieces, she’d been told, that Pepper had to fight tooth and nail to keep from being donated or sold after years of careful curation - they were rotated through about every quarter to keep the installation feeling fresh). She approached the desk, which was set higher than Judith’s, surrounded with what appeared to be a defensive orientation of the desktops.

(In case the security office was breached by something that wasn’t interested in administrative assistance, she supposed.)

“Yes?” The administrative assistant was an patent-pending SI-bulldog - terse, firm, and pulling a Gandalf from moment one with the ‘none shall pass’ attitude.

“Darcy Lewis for Maria Hill.”

“The Director is in a meeting,” the crisp accent was dismissal at its best.

She smiled, showing teeth. “Yes, I know. I’m supposed to be in that meeting.”

“This meeting is restricted.”

“Restricted to Director Hill, Captain Rogers, and me.”

The administrative grey wizard stared her down for a moment. He had perfect skin and artfully mussed hair, and knew an eyeliner pencil better than she did. And she was pretty sure he thought she was a lying liar who lied.

“I’m on the meeting roster. Please check the schedule.”

He stared her down for a moment longer, eyes almost dead with disinterest in her shenanigans, though tinged with a hint of homicidal mania. Without breaking eye contact, he hit several keys on his computer, then darted his eyes towards it, considering whatever information he was seeing.

“I’m going to need to see your ident card.”

“Of course,” she looped her lanyard from around her neck, handing the precious key-to-everything over. This dude was not her biggest fan, and she was going to have to work on that. Quickly. Having a pissing contest every week with an admin who probably outranked her (it was at least a lateral equivalent, considering Pepper was the CEO) held absolutely no allure.

The gatekeeper took her ID and didn’t even look at the picture, didn’t scan the barcode, just turned it over and closely examined the lower right corner. He scraped at it with a perfectly manicured thumbnail, and then looked at her as though he was looking over the rims of invisible glasses. He handed back the ID, not appearing amused by her perceived shenanigans.

He picked up the phone next to his left hand.

“Miss Lewis,” he said into the phone, and then hung it up, looking up at her. With an air of practiced elitism, he gestured towards the closed door which bore the plate “M. Hill, Director of Security”.

“Thank you,” she paused, waiting for him to fill in his name.

“Felix.”

“Thanks Felix.” She turned on the winning smile that had charmed scientists and demigods alike. “Apologies for the surprise. I was just added on Tuesday.”

“Mm,” he dismissed her by simply looking away and attending to other duties.

Maybe cupcakes would work. Everyone loved cupcakes.

Entering the room, she felt the little kernel of anxiety rise into her throat again. She swallowed hard as though that would dispel the feeling. Maria sat behind her desk, her elbows propped on her desk and her chin resting on laced fingers. Steve sat across from her, sprawled in the chair, his own chin propped up by an elbow on the chair arm. They both rose when she entered the room fully, closing the door behind her.

Maria put her hand out first, coming around the edge of the desk. “Maria Hill. Pleasure to meet you, Darcy.”

She nodded, and when Maria let go of her hand, Steve took it.

“Hello again,” he grinned at her and his teeth could have pinged! with perfect whiteness of a toothpaste commercial, his blue eyes practically sparkling. Completely unfair to her neglected libido, which raised her body temperature with a brief full-body flush.

Maria returned to her desk, and Steve to his chair, gesturing at the same time to the empty seat and instructing “have a seat” in unison. Steve grinned at Maria and then at her.

“I thought we’d go a little off-agenda for this week, since we have to largely bring you up to speed. I understand you have a degree in political science?” Maria asked, sitting ramrod straight in her chair.

“Yes.”

“And will you be pursuing a higher degree? Perhaps some internships?”

“I’ve spoken with Donna briefly about exploring the Masters program at Columbia. She has set me up with the director at the Center for International Conflict Resolution.” Maria’s eyes seemed to smile at that - a secretive smile.

“It’s a good program. The director knows what he’s doing. And if she wants you to meet with him, there are hopefully some opportunities to meet some big players that you’ll need to get on the good side of if we’re going to make this work.”

Darcy shifted her tablet in her lap. “Mr. Rog, er, Captain Rogers,” she began.

“Steve,” he gently corrected her.

“Steve,” she smiled at him, grateful for a little dispelling of tension. “Steve and Ms. Potts explained to me the generalities of the project, but it was clear to me that there will be more than just funding direction involved.”

Maria nodded. “Lots of paperwork. I’ll assign a lower level specialist to you for some grounding assistance. As I’m sure you know, the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D left a rather large gap in our country’s domestic and international reconnaissance and domestic security. What remains of S.H.I.E.L.D continues to fulfill that mission, but they can’t do everything. Certain members of the Initiative do double-duty for my S.H.I.E.L.D contacts, but the cloak-and-dagger of it all means that certain entities receive services practically free of charge. Blackmail is certainly an option, but it’s ineffective when overused. I’m looking for some assistance in ensuring that the S.H.I.E.L.D missions the Initiative undertakes benefits S.H.I.E.L.D’s intel, and the Initiative’s bank account. Right now I have S.H.I.E.L.D contacts all over the world, each operating within individualized cells of the larger organization - the network we, _they_ , used to enjoy is gone, as is the trust they used to share.”

“So you want to make a business out of the spy jobs. I’ve helped write lots grant proposals - give us your money so we can do this thing which will benefit you someday. I suppose that might help.”

“The specialist I’ll assign to you will help you with that branch of the position. The rest of it is more up your alley - glorified grant proposals, except this time you’re looking to the United States Government to earmark you some funds. A few hundred thousand here and there in the interest of national security. Occasionally it will be non-U.S. governments and you’ll be looking less for a paycheck and more for logistical support on-site and a pre-nup, if you will, against any collateral damage the op may incur.”

“I run the ops on the ground for my team,” Steve broke in. “Tony’s AI, Friday, does the lion’s share of our real-time mission ops. There will be a need for research assistance working with Friday to help prepare for the ops before they go live, but that will be need-based as a mission arises. When it’s on your plate, it will be all that’s on your plate, but between missions, smoothing the way and securing funding for the smaller S.H.I.E.L.D ops and the Initiative at large will be your priority.”

“It is unlikely the Initiative will be able to gain complete independence from SI; but our goal is to make it a string to follow home, not a belaying rope holding everyone out of the caldera.”

As she took notes, it felt like this wasn’t as overwhelming as it had originally seemed. She was not creating the dots, only drawing the lines between them. Nothing she was doing involved reinventing the wheel, just an incredible propensity for organization and cat wrangling. It would be scary and overwhelming, but good, challenging work.

After years of being afraid of shadows, she was going to be punching shadows in the face. Well, not really, but… the point was, nothing was holding her back. She had the support of one of the largest corporate entities in the world, and apparently a bunch of superheroes. She was going to _do things_ , and the next time aliens invaded with their disintegrating ray guns, she was going to… well, she knew how to perform in a crisis. It was the post-crisis that had been so difficult. Or, well, not at first. The post-NDA life out of the realm of all future crises had been the real kicker - she had been important, a vital cog, a person that did stuff that helped, and then she was not. The feeling of helplessness, knowing the potential of world (the universe, really) and suddenly being thrust from the nexus of influence made her fearful of everything she knew she didn’t know. And the shadows lingered.

After twenty years of relative obscurity, she had realized that her place was in the thick of it. And if this wasn’t thick, she’d lost the meaning of the word entirely.

* * * * *

She swung by Jane’s lab to retrieve her for the train ride home. A good 70% of the time, Jane’s position with Stark R&D was a nine to five type job. The other 30% she found her own way home. Today was in the 70% category, and she arrived just in time for the other labs to be packing up for the evening, and Jane had been bored enough to actually notice.

“Hey. How’d today go?” Jane poked around her station, creating an incomprehensible organization for her to pick up where she left off tomorrow.

“Oh, you know. Hung out with Captain America. Made plans for world peace,” she shrugged.

“Hm,” Jane reached for her jacket, pulling it on. “Hear from James?”

“He said two weeks. It hasn’t even been a week.”

Jane watched her for a moment, and Darcy tried not to squirm under her gaze. For all their original friendship was built on Darcy being her wildly unqualified go-fer, Jane was particularly tenacious about her health and well-being since Darcy had returned to New York. And even more so about the men she chose to date - few passed Jane’s rigorous and incomprehensible tests (composed mostly of penetrating looks, and seemingly innocuous questions), and when they did, they were subject to even greater personal scrutiny. 

“And how do you feel about that?”

“Jane, I love you like a fat kid loves cake, but let’s not psychoanalyze my two-date ninja. If he calls back, he calls back, and maybe sex can be a thing I get to have in my life again. If not, welp, I’ve got a job I can easily spend all my waking hours on for the foreseeable future until another non-mutant man-friend crosses my path. Maybe Thor can hook me up,” she laughed.

“Darcy,” Jane sounded disappointed.

“I mean, Fandral is a bit effeminate for me, I like a fella who’s a bit more masculine and less likely to boff the bar wench when I’m not looking, but I’d be willing to reconsider my stance.”

“Darcy.”

“Jane. It’s not the most important thing I’ve got going right now. So chop chop, pack your shit, we’re going to miss the train,” Darcy clapped her hands at Jane, who lifted her messenger bag with an air of resignation.

* * * * *

“The infamous Darcy Lewis. Finally, we meet.”

Darcy looked up from her computer, startled, at the man who stood with an arm slung over the top of her divider, his hand clutching a Jamba Juice cup.

“Mr. Stark.”

Tony looked around comically. “Nope, sorry, my dad’s dead. Hi, I’m Tony,” he waved one hand. “You’ve been cockblocking me for days, and we’re going to need to talk about that.”

“Tony, leave her alone,” Donna stalked over to where the party was.

“Hey, don’t defend her!” Tony turned towards Donna. “This is serious.”

“And you know this deal with Tokyo is serious.”

Tony just stared at Donna for a moment, and then took a noisy slurp from his smoothie. “I still think it’s her fault,” he pointed his other thumb at Darcy. “And nothing you can do can keep me from thinking that.”

“You’re right. But what I can keep you from doing is interfering with Darcy’s productivity.” Donna peeked around Tony to make eye contact with Darcy. “She’s free until one, right?”

“Yep.”

“Tony, Pepper is in her office. She has an obligation at one p.m. It is now eleven forty-six.”

Tony stood stock still for several seconds and then broke away, darting towards Pepper’s office. Donna turned slightly to watch him go, and then shook her head and turned back towards Darcy.

“Tomorrow at three is your appointment with the director at Columbia. I got Pepper to sign off on an increased educational benefit package due to your new position, and the director has the potential to recommend you for several graduate fellowships. The teaching assistantships would be difficult with your schedule, but if that’s what you want…”

“I’m fine grading papers for a grant, but actually doing lesson plans and that crap? No allure for me there.”

“Well, Josh actually likes grading papers, so you’ll have something in common.”

“Josh?”

“The director. Joshua Lyman.”

“Right. Awesome. So there’s a lot going on in a very short period of time. Can I say I’m slightly overwhelmed? Not totally, not completely, just slightly.”

Donna grinned. “Welcome to my world.”

Darcy let out a short laugh. “So this is how this feels?”

Donna nodded. “This is how it feels. And it only gets crazier from here.”

“You smile like that’s a good thing.”

* * * * *

“Come in, come in, have a seat. Um, actually, let me get that off the seat so you can sit in it,” Josh Lyman hefted a stack of journals off the only seat in his office and then looked around for a place to set them, perching them precariously on a corner of his desk. “Please, sit,” he gestured, and Darcy sat. She watched him pull a pair of wire frame spectacles from his shirt pocket and put them on one handed as he grabbed a nondescript manila folder from a stack on the other side of his desk.

“So, my wife speaks highly of you,” he offered, sitting and opening the folder.

“Your wife?”

Josh laughed and looked at her with a slightly incredulous smile. “Donna. Your boss. Guess she was trying to make this feel less nepotic or something.”

“Oh! Sorry. Yeah. I didn’t know she was your wife. We, um, don’t talk about our personal lives much.”

“Donna doesn’t share intimate details of her personal life with complete strangers? Are we talking about the same person?” Darcy laughed uncomfortably, and kept a smile on her face. “Well. Anyway. I do have a fellowship through the Institute I could offer you if you got into the program. The application is an essay about how the Institute’s resources would be a continuing positive impact on your course of study. If you’re using the program as continuing education for your position, I’m sure I could point you in the direction of the types of resources that you could find useful.”

“So… that’s it? No… interview?”

Josh smiled lopsidedly, and it gave him dimples. The crow’s feet at the corners of his chocolate brown eyes and the curly mess of hair liberally threaded with grey made him look considerably older than his wife, but there was definitely a charm there.

“Did you want there to be one? Because I’m quick on my feet. I could come up with some pretty hard questions.”

Darcy was not lost for words often - she prided herself on being able to fill in awkward silences and quip back on the quick. But this was the third time she was blindsided by incredible opportunity, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. She seriously considered pinching herself, because at this point, her life felt a little bit hallucinatory.

“Honestly? I feel like I keep getting handed these great things, and I’m starting to feel like I’m going to wake up from a dream.”

Josh laughed. “Why?”

“I applied for legal pool. I got CEO’s calendar keeper. Which was apparently a holding pattern for research assistant, funding coordinator, schmoozer, and inter-agency liaison for the frickin’ Avengers. Forgive me if ‘sure, we’ll give you a fellowship which will pretty much entirely pay for a Master’s program at a prestigious university’ feels like the icing on a cake of lithium-addled lies.”

Josh considered her for a moment, cocking his head. “After so many years of working in professional politics, I just don’t know what to do with someone who experiencing an ego crisis that is lack of, rather than overabundance.”

“You ever hear of ‘too much of a good thing’?”

“Complete bullshit. Genuinely good things happen too rarely for that to be true. And by genuine, I mean, ‘without sixty feet of strings’. Most good things are like a Portuguese Man O’ War. You know, those huge jellyfish with the big…” he shaped his hands in the air to depict it.

“I know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you, though?” He dropped his hands.

Darcy frowned. “I do know what a Portuguese Man O’ War is.”

“No, no,” he waved his hand. “Forget about the jellyfish. What I mean is, you didn’t get here because of hand-outs. No one from Stark Industries called you out of the blue and said ‘come work for us because we know you know people’. You submitted a resume; a resume that came at the cost of almost not finishing your degree because you were diversifying the hell out of your practical experiences. I’m betting,” he pointed a finger at her, “you aren’t getting the job you’re getting because you know people - I’m betting you’re getting the job because you’ve proven yourself competent at handling whatever is thrown at you. Donna respects you a lot, Darcy, and in recent years that respect has been a lot harder to come by than it used to be. And I’m not giving you this fellowship because you work for my wife. I’m giving you this fellowship because I’m already familiar with what you do and some of the responsibilities that you’re about to undertake. I know I could be helpful in making some connections you’re going to need. I know you need as many grants as you can get your hands on to make this program affordable. I’ve read some of the grant proposals you wrote and put your boss’s name on. I’ve read the thesis you submitted as part of your application to work in the SI legal pool,” he put his finger on a packet of paper in the folder. “You called this one in, but you’re not stupid, Darcy. You’re going to need all the help you can get. And your work has the potential to directly influence the exact kind ongoing situations this Center studies. Our entire purpose is to educate and fund movers and shakers. You’re already movin’, and you’re about to do a whole lotta shakin’,” he grinned, shimmying his shoulders looking at her over the top of his spectacles.

“So all I need to do is get into the program?”

“Yep. It’s not easy, and that’s on purpose. We’re competing with some very lucrative programs that feed directly into the big agencies and nonprofits. But I think you can do it, Darcy Lewis. Today, dip your toes in international backroom politics, tomorrow, I say you run for Congress.”

“Yeeeeah, no.”

“Oh well. It was worth a shot,” he shrugged. “Now let’s talk about your entrance application. No one told me I can’t give you some advice. Well, more advice. Look at me, I give advice now,” he chuckled to himself and Darcy just raised a brow before pulling out her tablet to take notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was an entire chapter that could have been named 'Darcy Meets People'. Also, Felix is, at the very least, closely modeled after Felix Dawkins from Orphan Black. (If you're not watching it, put it on your to-do list.) I'm trying to fill in the headcanon that would have resulted in Felix being recruited by Maria to be her front line - I'm thinking they met when she was still with S.H.I.E.L.D and she liked that he wasn't intimidated by her but still respected her bottom line. Then when she hooks up with SI and needs a front-line fella, she calls him up and offers him a job in artsy New York. Maybe. I don't know. So it's maybe that Felix. Maybe it's another sassy takes-no-prisoners-unless-they're-really-good-looking Felix.
> 
> And hey! Josh cameo! That was harder than I expected because it's been SO LONG since I've written Josh. I fully acknowledge he could be more Josh-like, and while some of the difference is on purpose (he's in a much less stressful job; he LIVES with Donna and therefore possibly picked up her habit of the Random Ramble; he's several years older), some of it is because it's been awhile since I had the Josh!voice. (And I may have been channeling Danny Tripp a little by accident.) But that is a rabbit hole - doing more research than I did to get this far may have resulted in me diving back into WW fic and not emerging for weeks.
> 
> Also: the Center for International Conflict at Columbia is a real thing. But that's where the similarities end - I made up all the rest... so far as I know.
> 
> Lastly, thank you thank you thank you to all my subscribers (there are, at last count, 409 of you!), readers, commenters, and kudosers - you make my day. Constantly. Thanks ever so much for being so lovely.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky chapter!

“You transmit everything?”

Bucky smirked. “I’m very good at following orders,” he replied, taunting with his sarcasm, and Maria looked at him over the top of her tablet.

“Natasha said you wanted point on an op.”

“Natasha talks a lot.”

“Is she right?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t doing a lot of planning, but I can run an op. I want the opportunity.”

“You own an op through me, you plan it from assignment to debrief.”

“I learn fast.”

Maria stared at him for several seconds, her face blank, but her eyes giving away how fast her brain was running the numbers.

This was why he liked Maria - she was straightforward, pulled no punches, and did not even attempt to coddle him. She was crisp orders and clear boundaries, and never made him feel like things were being kept from him for his own good. The things he knew she kept from him, she made it crystal clear that the mission or _her_ orders said she had to. After over a year of being back in the world, as Bruce called it, some of them still coddled him. Steve, definitely. Natasha, a little. Sam, a little. Maria though, Maria never did, not even in the beginning. Maria evaluated a situation and took action - and according to Steve was a tenderheart of the most severe degree, but if Steve hadn’t said it, he never would have known it. And so he respected her, because she didn’t skirt around his sharp edges, she plowed forward and made him rise to the challenge. 

He’d been brainwashed, over and over again, because the version of the serum created by HYDRA forced his body into a constant cycle of repair - it repaired his neural pathways and regenerated fried brain cells like the electroshock and chemical treatments were a disease. And it got better at it over the years. Eventually only cryo kept the healing in a static state, unable to do its job, so they had to constantly “reapply” the “therapies” between missions, and on those lasting more than a couple of days, during, which was always a struggle for everyone involved.

But he had been healing for months, without any setbacks like high voltage or chemical cocktails meant to burn through his sense of self. He was tired of sitting in the wings. He couldn’t be an Avenger - too much of him out on the world wide web making it clear he was an enemy, not a hero. But he could help here, he could help S.H.I.E.L.D. He could, as Nat put it, wipe out some of the red in his ledger. And no matter how much she’d done, if her ledger was dripping, his was so soaked as to make the smeared writing impossible to decipher.

“Let me think about it.”

He nodded. “All I can ask.”

The phone beeped and Maria hit the speaker button. “Yeah.”

“Ms. Lewis is here.”

“Right. Thanks. Send her in.”

“Ma’am?”

“My three o’clock is on his way out. Send her in.”

The assistant hung up and Bucky raised an eyebrow. “You make me sound like a quickie. Steve won’t like you steppin’ out on him,” he began to rise from the chair. “We ain’t never shared dames before, and for some reason I don’t think he shares well.”

Maria’s face betrayed no emotion. “Out of my office, Barnes.”

“Yes ma’am,” he saluted, and reached for the door, opening it and catching his breath at the occupant of the lobby leaning over the receptionist desk, pointing at a plastic container filled with cupcakes. He quickly shut the door again, leaning against the back of it.

“Shit.”

“What part of ‘get out of my office’ was difficult for you?”

Bucky stared at her a moment before cracking. “So I went out with this girl couple weeks back.”

“Good for you? I fail to see what that has to do with you holding up my door.”

“She has no idea who I am.”

“And you do?”

“Not the time for jokes, Maria.”

“So? What? She’s out in my lobby?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“She knows James, who does corporate security somewhere in Manhattan. She is a PA or something for some big whig in Manhattan. Lives in Brooklyn, our old neighborhood. I’m trying to keep it together right now but I’m going to have a panic attack in about three seconds because this smells like HYDRA and my fight or flight instincts have had their dial turned to flight since you fools took me in and…”

Maria stared at him through his babbled confession, and something about it didn’t add up. No way HYDRA was getting past her again. Not again. She picked up her phone and buzzed her assistant.

“Is Miss Lewis the only one in the lobby?”

“Yeeees. And she’s brought me cupcakes. You can have one if you’re nice to me and approve my time off request.”

She just hung up the phone without commenting, and looked at Bucky with an eyebrow raised.

“You’re dating Pepper Potts’ assistant. Jane Foster’s roomate.”

“Thor’s Jane Foster?”

Maria nodded.

“Shit.”

“She’s not HYDRA, James. And she’s not stupid. She’s going to figure you out pretty quick.

He put his hands together like a prayer, despite the blasphemy, and prayed to the goddess that was Maria Hill.

“Maria. If you have even one ounce of sympathy for me, you will go out there and distract her long enough for me to escape.”

“Classy.”

“I’d rather she hate James for never calling back rather than ever figuring out who I really am.”

“Sam is going to have a field day with this.”

“Because of course you couldn’t just do me a favor and keep it to yourself.”

“Two favors is a little steep. You don’t have that much credit.”

“Please.”

“I’ll distract her. No promises about the rest.”

“I’ll take it.”

Maria rose. “Out of my way, Barnes.”

“I love you.”

“Shut up.”

Maria opened the door, pushing him aside with one hand, but enough to convey her amusement.

“Miss Lewis? You needed something?”

Bucky peeked out the door and saw Maria blocking his exit from view as she took the tablet from Darcy, and he slipped out, heading for the stairwell rather than risking the elevator.

After their last date, he’d had every intention of calling her (right after he left Maria’s office from the debrief, as a matter of fact) for their dinner date. He liked her. He knew intimacy was off the table, because he wasn’t willing to risk his identity, and the metal arm would’ve taken all of thirty seconds of Googling. But he wanted a few dates. A few more kisses. Some time out of his head with a dame who was nice to look at and fun to be with.

He really should’ve cut his hair. Put on some weight. Something. But he’d become comfortable - he liked the safety net that his custom BDUs gave his sometimes-scatterbrained sense of paranoia. He wasn't the Bucky Barnes from the history books anymore, and though he answered to the name, the hair reminded him he wasn't a clean-cut Sergeant anymore. He wasn't the Asset, the Winter Soldier, or the kid from Brooklyn - he was some mix of them all that baked up just differently enough to build a new life on. He hadn’t had a flashback in months when it had happened at the aquarium. He had been making progress for months. And now he was seventeen steps back and on high alert.

A thousand things raced through his head. What were the chances that he’d meet a stranger on the street (or a Starbucks and a deli) and she’d not only be a Stark Industries employee, but work with Pepper and live with Jane? He couldn’t help it - it didn’t just smell faintly of HYDRA, it _stank_. It was just something they’d do - wait for him to settle down, stop looking for shadows, and start looking for things other people wanted in their lives and he wasn’t allowed to have. The real Darcy Lewis could be in an unmarked grave while an agent with a Darcy face paraded around playing a long game with him. He’d convinced himself it wasn’t going to get serious, but dames could mess with your mind, and he had been primed to let the smart, sassy, empathetic Darcy Lewis lead him to the promised land.

He stopped in the stairwell, sliding down the wall, sitting on the stair, with his leg propped on the one below, trying to regulate his breathing. He tipped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, unable to stem the wave that washed over him, making his limbs shake and his breath come short. He tried to inhale deeply through his nose, tried to push the oxygen through his body and slow his heart. It took several minutes to straighten himself out, and he wished, for just a second, that he wasn’t sporting serum-lite through his veins so that he could’ve been medicated for moments like these. Sam and Steve and Natasha and Maria had all been very clear - what he was experiencing was not abnormal, it was not wrong, it was not a dirty secret anymore. It was a chemical imbalance that occurred in the most “normal” of soldiers coming back into the world (if such an idea could ever be normal), and it could be medicated. In everyone but him. His serum broke that shit down and filtered it out like so much garbage. So he had to do it the old-fashioned way. And sometimes he really wanted it to be simpler.

His phone buzzed with a text, and he let his breathing even out before pulling the phone out of the leg pocket of his pants.

_Maria Hill: Come back up. Have something for you._

He stared at it for a moment before typing back.

_Not in mood for surprise_

_Maria Hill: I’m not a fucking asshole, Barnes. I’m not going to put you in a room with her. Just get your ass back to my office._

He let out a soft snort and didn’t reply, just slipped the phone back in his pocket. He nodded to himself and levered up from the stairs and went back the way he came towards the the Security Administration department.

A quick walk-by showed the office was empty except for Felix, who sat at the reception desk with his head tilted to the side as he considered the paint job on his nails.

Felix also didn’t miss a damn thing.

“She’s waitin’ for you,” he said, without ever looking away from his manicure.

Bucky just nodded and depressed the door handle, letting himself in. Maria was at her file cabinet, and nodded at him to take a seat before letting a file thwack on the desk in front of him.

“I took a DNA sample from her when she was here. Ran it against the one on file from some S.H.I.E.L.D interaction from New Mexico a few years back.”

“You have access to S.H.I.E.L.D files?”

“I did not help Steve and Natasha bring down everything I worked for without taking a good chunk of intel with me. The dirty laundry may be spread all over the internet, but no one gives a shit about DNA profiles with serial numbers on them. You want to know what happened when I ran the sample?” 

Bucky didn’t reply, just flipped open the file, and looked at the photos clipped to the inside - her employee ID snapshot, and underneath it, a surveillance photo of her and Jane on a rooftop in the desert, one taken through a diner window of her taking a cellphone photo of a grinning blond man who was clearly Thor in casual dress, his hair shorter than the last time he saw the demigod. There was a newspaper clipping of her and Eric Selvig and a young man the photo captioned as Ian Boothby, falling out of a small foreign car in London. The rest of the file was her academic record, detailing a gap in her education after the events of New Mexico and picking up almost a year after the London incident, her S.H.I.E.L.D psych profile, her job application to the legal pool with attached references and a piece of academic writing, an application to the Columbia University Masters of Political Science, a recommendation written by Joshua Lyman, J.D., and personal reference interviews with Dr. Jane Foster, Dr. Eric Selvig, Thor Odinson, and Marsha Vargas.  


Bucky looked up at Maria, question in his eyes.

“Are you sure? It might not be her,” he mumbled after a minute of silence.

Maria watched him for a few moments and then pulled her rolling chair over to where he sat and perched on the edge, leaning over her knees.

“James.”

“Yeah.”

“The DNA was a match.” She paused. “Do you have legitimate concern that Darcy Lewis not who she appears to be?”

He inhaled and exhaled deeply and didn’t respond.

“I think you’re working yourself into a state because of a series of admittedly odd, but ultimately innocent coincidences.” He still kept silent, fingers flicking the edges of the paper pages in the file. “Do you want me to call Sam?” she asked quietly. He shook his head. “Steve?”

His shoulders fell, and she sat back and pulled her phone out of her blazer pocket. He felt a flare of gratitude laced with affection he wasn’t comfortable labeling. She never touched him, and she didn’t make him feel stupid or ridiculous, but she just _knew_. She knew what to do, and he wasn’t sure if the sting he felt in his eyes was happiness for Steve finding someone who was clearly _it_ , or thankful that someone who loved Steve could care for him this way too.

* * * * *

Steve showed up and, whatever Maria had said to him, didn’t coddle. He walked in dressed in a flannel shirt open over a white tee shirt with his aviators clipped to the collar and jeans that explained why even straight-laced women like Maria got gooey over him. He greeted Maria with a quick peck on the cheek and an arm squeeze, and then turned to Bucky, and thumbed over his shoulder at the door.

“C’mon Buck, let’s take a walk.”

Bucky wanted to sass back, but there was no profit in it. Steve’s overprotectiveness may have annoyed him after exactly three seconds of concerned probing, but this was Captain Steve - this was the one who treated Bucky like the soldier, and not the broken pieces of a man held together with spit and fervent hopes.

They walked down the stairwell without speaking. Steve seemed to sense that the less secure route of the elevator was not on the table. They emerged out the delivery door on street level and walked down the block to a hot dog cart. They each ordered two dogs with the works and Steve directed them to a bench to consume their acquisitions.

The first one went down without a word, but the second one was halfway to his mouth before Steve broke the silence.

“So. Darcy Lewis is the doll.”

“You know her too?”

Steve nodded. “She’s gonna be takin’ on some of the shit I’ve been spendin’ my nights on instead of sleeping. Administrative stuff. I’m gettin’ too good at it - pretty soon they’re going to shove me behind the desk and give you my shield.”

Bucky shook his head and took a bite of his second dog. “Doubt it,” he replied, mouth full of bun and processed kosher beef.

Steve shrugged. “It’s only a matter of time.” He took a bite of his second serving and chewed thoughtfully. “She’s good people, Darcy. If you were askin’ me.”

“I’m not. I can’t, Steve.”

Steve just nodded. “I get you. But what I said before, about lyin’? You wouldn’t have to lie to Darce. She’s been in it for years, an’ coupla weeks ago, she got handed the keys to the keep.”

“Drop it, Steve.”

He felt Steve’s eyes on him, and he shoved the rest of his dog into his mouth, barely able to keep his mouth closed to chew.

“Alright,” he nodded. “But you’re gonna wanna think ‘bout how to deal with the very real possibility that you’ll encounter her professionally. She’s still got her desk in the Tower, but if this goes where I’m thinkin’ it’ll go, she’ll be settin’ up shop in the compound sooner rather than later.”

“Shit. Really?”

“Really.”

“Fuck.”

Steve just nodded, and Bucky pulled his phone out of his pants. He began to type with both thumbs, trying to be extra careful to spell every word and leave nothing out, and Steve glanced over.

“Who’re you textin’?”

“Who do you think?”

Steve frowned. “Change your mind already?”

“Nope.”

Steve’s brows furrowed further, and Bucky didn’t pay him any mind.

_Know I said I’d take you out on proper dinner date, but just had opportunity fall in my lap. No idea when I’ll be back._

He waited a full three minutes, staring at the screen, willing her to respond, while Steve stared at out the pedestrian traffic, his arms braced across the length of the back of the bench.

_Darcydoll: Can’t say I’m not disappointed. But spy job comes first, right?_

He stared at the message.

_You don’t even know how sorry I am, doll. Was really looking forward to it._

It was two minutes before she replied this time.

_Darcydoll: Well if you’re ever in the mood for Eastern European deli food, you know where to find me :)_

He inhaled and exhaled deeply, pondering if he should even reply. This was supposed to be a cutting of ties. No promises. He stared at her message for far longer than he should have, and then deleted both the conversation and her number from his phone.

Less temptation that way.

“How about we head back and we can do some aggression management,” Steve offered. He’d apparently been reading over his shoulder. Bastard.

“Yeah,” Bucky nodded, standing. “This has been a total shit day, Rogers. I’m gonna need to beat the shit outta somethin’. Better you’n anyone else.”

“Just try to lay off the face this time,” he touched his own cheek as he rose from the bench. “Without my good looks I’m done for.”

Bucky’s mouth lifted in a half smile and he reached for Steve, pulling him down and rubbing his knuckles in his sandy blond hair. “Punk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maria and Bucky's friendship kinda came at me out of nowhere. So I ran with it.


	11. Chapter 11

_Two Months Later…_

“We’ll do the meet and greet next week, here. How’s that work for you?” Steve leaned against her desk, his long legs stretched out and blocking any entry or exit to the cubicle.

Darcy shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, Cap. My minion status is pretty much already yours. You say ‘jump’, I say ‘how high’.”

“Is that so?”

She darted a look at him. “Sometimes I’m not sure if you’re sassing me or having a case of the time shocks.”

Steve grinned. “Mostly the first one. I’m pretty well adjusted at this point. And if there’s anything I’m missing, Sam and Bucky make sure I’m educated real quick.”

“Tony doesn’t help?”

Steve let out a short laugh. “You can’t even keep a straight face when you use the words ‘Tony’ and ‘help’ in the same sentence,” he insisted, and Darcy broke into a smile as his phone buzzed. “‘scuse me.”

Darcy kept checking her email, but she watched him out of the corner of her eye. She watched him smile warmly as he texted back.

“Hey, can you ask her what the status is on my UN clearance? It makes me super nervous that someone has my birth certificate. I haven’t been this freaked out since getting my passport.”

“Huh? What?” Steve’s put-on confusion was precious.

“You’re a terrible actor. How did you help the war effort before you started literally kicking Nazi ass?”

“I’m actually a pretty good actor, thank you. I’ve got more pictures under my belt than you.”

“That has nothing to do with the price of tea in China. Stop changing the subject. And don’t play dumb. Just ask her for me, will ya?”

He stared at her for a second. “How did you…” he held up his phone and shook it back and forth a little.

“You guys are a thing, right?”

She watched him reassess every weekly meeting, trying to find the giveaway.

“It’s not one specific thing,” she let him off the hook, leaning back in her chair and considering it. “It’s the soft eye contact. The easy body language. The way you lean back when she leans forward, or you lean back and she leans forward, or you lean in and she holds the eye contact. It’s actually really sweet. Honest.”

Steve gave her a smile tinged with resignation. “I’ll ask.”

“Thanks.” She paused while he sent his text. “Why are you making them all come here? Don’t you all live out in BFE?”

“BFE?”

“Middle of nowhere.”

“It’s the Hudson Valley. Rockland County, if I remember correctly. Not exactly middle of nowhere. You want middle of nowhere…”

“Live in a desert?”

“I was going to say drive three hours north and find towns where the cows outnumber the people, but a desert works,” he shrugged amiably.

“I meant, why make them come all out here?”

“Does them good to leave the compound as much as possible. It’s still a little isolating living out there. Besides, if this works out, you’ll be seein’ plenty of our compound; you won’t turn down any chances to escape either.”

“Not while I’m still going to school!” Darcy looked up sharply from where she she had started to pack her bag for the night.

Steve laughed. “I suppose we can give you ‘til after graduation.”

“Lighten up on me, Rogers. And you do know if I move in with you tools, I’m bringing Janie with me, right?”

Steve smiled and frowned at the same time, and the confusion was adorable on his stupid face.

“We’re a package deal. I can’t leave her on her own. Or she can’t leave me on my own, I can’t really decide, to be honest,” she shrugged, waving her hand in the air as though the distinction wasn’t really important. It wasn’t.

“I think if I try poaching any more people from Stark Industries I’m going to have my Tower clearance revoked.”

“Should’ve thought about that before you went straight for Pepper’s support staff.”

“Besides, isn’t she in R&D?”

“Yeah, but she travels a lot. It doesn’t really matter where she calls home base. And if you give her a lab and let Bruce share the other side, she’ll settle right in. It’s like setting up a goldfish tank - put the little air-bubble treasure chest in there,” she made opening and closing motions with her hand, “and a plastic rock for her to hide under, and it doesn’t matter if you put the tank in the front hall or in the living room.”

Steve made the amused-confused face again. “You think Jane is like a goldfish?”

Darcy cocked her head at him. “You haven’t spent much time with her, have you?”

“No, but…”

“She’s super smart, don’t get me wrong,” Darcy held up a hand. “And I love her like cupcakes. But geniuses being a few marbles short is a cliché for a reason. I’m keeping her home fires burning until Thor decides to make her space princess of Asgard for realsies. I can’t leave her behind.”

Steve opened his mouth to reply, then closed it, and gave her a tight smile. “Well alright. I mean, it’s not like there isn’t room. I don’t know as Bruce wants to leave the Tower though.”

“I’ll convince him. He’s gotta face the music sooner or later.”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “How…”

“I’m good with people, Cap. Isn’t that why you hired me? And Bruce never talks directly about it, but he’s about as inconspicuous as a disco ball ever since he found out I was in the club.”

Steve made a disapproving clucking noise. “I really don’t think you should get involved, Darcy. I know you’re trying to help, but that is something they need to work out for themselves.”

Darcy looked thoughtful. “Bruce is a big boy. I’m not meddling. I’m going to offer and I’m going to make the offer good because he and Janie are perfect lab partners. Whether or not he decides to do something about the mess I’m inferring his personal life is has pretty much nothing to do with me.”

“ _Pretty much_ nothing?” Steve still sounded disapproving, this time with a tinge of incredulity.

“I don’t care that she’s named after a venomous spider and can kick my ass into next month; if she goes after Bruce and makes him leave Jane or Science out of self-preservation, I will… figure out something suitably uncomfortable for her. Like taking a seam ripper to her jumpsuits. I don’t know. I’ll figure out something. I’m pretty fond of him. So is Jane.”

“Well I’d hate to you lose you,” Steve offered, resigned.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Cap,” she shot back wryly.

He shrugged. “Maybe you should take up krav maga or somethin’. I’m pretty fond of the idea of givin’ up half my paperwork. It’s gonna be an awfully short fight otherwise.”

She let out a huff of laughter. “What, two hits? Her hitting me and me hitting the floor?”

“Pretty much,” he nodded.

“Ugh. Super soldiers.”

“Hey now.”

* * * * *

“Well, the whole family is here, let me do a head count,” Tony entered the conference room with a clap of his hands, and began to audibly count off.

“Capsicle, Wings, Witchy Woman, Hawkguy, Natalie, Junior… where’s the Stoli Soldier?”

“He’s not technically an Avenger, Tony.”

“So what? I mean, I’m kind of not anymore either, but I showed up for this nonsense. I already know her,” Tony thumbed towards Darcy. “And Rhodey didn’t have to come either? Captain Fabulous?”

“Colonel Rhodes is on assignment, and you know exactly where Carol is,” Steve admonished.

Tony let out a pffft noise and flapped his hand at Steve.

“You didn’t have to come, Tony,” Steve offered, a smile tugging at his mouth.

“Of course I did. Someone had to class up this joint,” he pulled out a rolly chair and sat down in it, twirling it back and forth for a few seconds. “Oh Jesus, sit! You’re all making me nervous.”

Steve smiled and cast his hand out at everyone else still standing, beckoning Darcy to his side and remaining standing.

“I’m sure you’ve heard some of what’s been going on, and I’d like you all to meet Darcy Lewis. She will be doing a lot of back office number crunching to keep the food on the table. Darcy, this is about half the team, but you know Thor and Bruce already, and Carol Danvers, codename Captain Marvel, and James Rhodes, codename War Machine, are off-site. This is Sam Wilson, codename Falcon,” Sam gave her a little wave and a smile. “Wanda Maximoff, codename Scarlet Witch, Clint Barton, codename Hawkeye, Natasha Romanoff, codename Black Widow, and Vision.”

“No codename,” the magenta-skinned man smiled at her with a nod of his head, and she smiled back.

“Stop flirting, Junior. You’re making the wife nervous,” Tony had pulled a stress ball out  
of somewhere and was tossing it back and forth between his hands.

Vision apparently didn’t object to the nickname, and just gave Tony something of an indulgent look that Tony promptly waved off. Wanda flipped him the bird and he just smiled at her. Her smile back was a little terrifying.

“So, now you’ve met all the mousketeers, tell us about yourself, Darcy Lewis,” Tony asks, and Steve rolls his eyes.

“Darcy,” Steve begins.

“Can speak for herself,” Tony shoots back, and Steve gives him that brittle smile that Darcy can just _tell_ is the totally fake I-want-to-throttle-you smile.

She puts her hand on Steve’s forearm lightly, and he steps back an inch, ceding the floor to her.

“Darcy works for Pepper and Steve,” she begins. “So the chain of command is the one I’m going to beat Tony with when he doesn’t follow commands,” she smiles at him, and Tony lets out a bark of laughter.

“I like you, Short Round.”

“That makes Steve Indy, just so you know. And you get shot in the club as he steals your girl.”

“Aww, don’t be like that.”

“Can we get back to… whatever this is?” Clint pipes up.

“Darcy is going to be handling armament requisitions and working with Maria Hill and myself on mission prep, and probably doing some ops with Friday once she gets used to how we work. She is going to be the Initiative liaison to Stark Industries, which is where Pepper comes in. Not that you all will really notice the difference, but the Initiative isn’t going to be relying on Stark Industries to sign the checks anymore - this means that sometimes Darcy will be asking for your help with goodwill missions to ensure everyone is on our side the next time the Big Bad comes knocking. It might mean a little glad-handing PR, but I know we can all handle it. Any questions so far?”

Tony raised his hand, and Steve rolled his eyes. “Yes, Tony?”

“Is this meeting over?”

Steve’s shoulders slumped. “Why are you here again?”

“I was actually looking for Barnes. I stayed to annoy you,” he offered with a grin, and Steve heard Wanda stifle a giggle.

“Yeah, I just wanted everybody to put names to faces. Any other questions?” No one so much as twitched. “Dismissed,” Steve instructed, and they all filed out.

“So now I’m on armament requisition?” Darcy asked, brow raised, and Steve pinked.

“It… you’re working the funding angles, so you’ll have a better grasp on what we can swing, and except for keeping the pantry stocked, that’s really our biggest expense.”

“Okay,” she sighs. “But can we talk about me doing more stuff before you tell everyone? Because the giant stack of crap hovering over my head right now is already feeling a little overwhelming, and I’ve only set up conference calls. I can take what you can dish, but we gotta,” she gestured back and forth between them, “communicado.”

Steve nodded. “Loud and clear.”

“So you don’t actually know where your comrade is?” Tony used his best Russian accent on the word ‘comrade’ and Darcy smiled briefly.

“No, Tony. I have no idea where Bucky is.”

“Well, this was a useless waste of time,” Tony informed them, and he saluted Darcy. “Overlord.”

“Jackass,” she made a curtsy and he laughed.

* * * * *

Natasha showed up to her next Sec-Init Admin meeting, forcing them to take it out of Maria’s office and into the Security Briefing Room.

“I promise you there is nothing we need to get involved in there.”

“The mayor of Caldwell seems to think otherwise,” Steve held up the printed out letter sent on ‘City of Caldwell’ letterhead.

Natasha smiled, the kind that was a smirk stored in her cheek. “Caldwell can handle its own problems. That is not a shitstorm any of us want in on.”

Maria narrowed her eyes. “I’m not agreeing with you because I don’t like secrets. But a drug turf war is really not something I want the Initiative seen addressing. We can’t be everyone’s nanny. We’ve got to make sure our sights are set on bigger fish.”

Steve pressed his lips together. “Alright. You make a point.”

Maria nodded, and Natasha followed suit, and they all went to the next page in the folder.

“The London op, I’m thinking about letting Barnes run it,” Maria mused, and looked up at Natasha, who cocked her head ever so slightly as she perused the mission outline.

“Depends on how you want to work him in - do you want him on team ops or back on solo gigs? The Soldier,” Darcy frowned a little, because she said it like the noun should be capitalized, “can do solo, but we haven’t had him do solo on an op that anyone else has run yet. I want to be able to use him for team ops, so I don’t want to burn him on it by making him think he can do every single thing himself. Bad habit to get into, really rough breaking out of it.”

Maria looked at Steve, and he appeared thoughtful before turning to Natasha.

“I think you should let him sit in the seat with London, and send you or Paulson as the point man. I think he can handle it, but I want to treat him like anybody else - no one goes totally solo first time running an op. We make exceptions for him, he’s gonna wonder why. We put special restrictions, he’s gonna wonder why. SOP on this one - he wants to own an op, he owns an op. But he’s sending someone else in. He’s careless with himself. With someone else, not so much.”

“Wonder where he got that from,” Maria murmured, loud enough to be heard and understood, and Natasha smiled, and Steve did a guilty smirk thing that Darcy knew got him places.

“Darce, whatcha got?” Steve looked at her and she looked around at her captive audience of Very Importants and exhaled to calm herself.

“I’m meeting with the UN next week to re-establish a subcommittee for International Safety. I have to have the proposal sent for approval by close of business tomorrow, so that it can be distributed and everyone can decide how hard they want to fight for a place on the subcommittee. If anyone has any last minute edits, please get it to me by close of business today so I have tomorrow to edit and scream and cry.”

Natasha flicked her finger up the screen, scrolling through the proposal. “Short version, please.”

“Less World Security Council, more Congressional Oversight.”

“Gag,” Maria offered, and Natasha nodded at her.

“It gives the Initiative the appearance of being less vigilante, and more upstanding citizens brigade. My impression is, they will make a lot of suggestions, have lots of needy needs, and when shit hits the fan, will disavow all knowledge of potential involvement in the shitstorm. They’re going to be pretty much useless, _but_ will lend legitimacy and transparency in the post-xenomorph-in-your-secret-organization’s-chest era.”

“Graphic,” Steve offered with a grimace.

“Accurate,” Natasha and Maria agreed in unison.

“Anything else?” Maria asked, and was greeted with silence and shaking heads. “Okay. Next week.”

“Same bat time, same bat channel,” Darcy added with a sigh as she rose from her chair, and realized that somehow, while she was blinking, Natasha had gone. Not even a tiny noise. Creepy.

“Okay, so who is this Barnes dude and why do we call him The Soldier?” she tried to emphasize the capitalization.

Maria gave her a strange look, and then looked at Steve, who was rubbing the back of his neck.

“His file is classified.”

Darcy frowned. “Dude. Do I or do I not have Clearance Level: Everything?”

Steve nodded, mouth slightly open. “Ahh… yeessss. But this is Clearance Levellll: Stuff Above Everything.”

“Oookay.”

“I’ll talk to some people.”

“Aren’t you top of the food chain?” Darcy raised an eyebrow.

“Sorta?”

“Steve. If I go in to that UN open floor tomorrow and make an ass of myself because I’m trying to ask for something that already exists, _secretly_ , and I don’t know about it and they’re already telling you what to do, I’m quitting. Like, I will ragequit right out of the UN, Bloomberg cameras and everything. So now’s your chance. Go.”

“I am top of the food chain for the Initiative, but it’s not just Initiative involved in this. S.H.I.E.L.D and a few other organizations have their hands in this, so I’m going to ask nicely, because you are Clearance Level: Everything, but I’m not making promises because this is a little above that.”

Darcy considered him for a second. “Okay. I can live with that.” She nodded, and turned away, only to spin back and point a finger at him. "Wait! Is this the guy?" Steve did the quizzical frown thing. "The guy who made a warzone of metro DC? Metal arm, seeeeecret Soviet science?" She wiggled her fingers at him like Soviet science was equivalent to magic. "They called him the Soldier. Something Soldier. Whatever. He works for us?!"

"Don't believe everything you read on the internet," Maria informed her.

"So this isn't the guy."

"This is really something we should discuss after you've read the file."

Darcy frowned. "Um, okay? Am I going to find out that he killed JFK? Because I don't believe _everything_ I read on the internet, but there are some conspiracy theories that are finally making sense now that they put this guy's name on it. I can understand if you don't want me in on the JFK thing. There were a ton of reaaaally weird coincidences with the witnesses after he was assassinated, you know. Like, death coincidences. I do not want to be a death coincidence. New York is dangerous, they'll say, when I'm struck by the only fast-moving cab in Manhattan."

"This is really a topic for some time not now, I have work to do," Maria waved at them, and Darcy's shoulders fell. It had somehow not occurred to her until this very moment that she was going to be working with the remnants of Secret Gov't Agency No. 1. This was her chance to get the really good goss.

Steve’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket, and she considered that her dismissal, so she began to pack her bag.

“Actually, Darce?” she could’ve sworn his voice picked up half an octave at the end, but it had been a weird meeting.

“Yeah?”

“Could you go, um, find Natasha? She’s down in Tony’s lab. She might be able to help you, er, us, with this file.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah. Now is really the best time.”

“Uh. Okay. Yeah. Sure. I mean, if you guys want to boink on the desk, I was definitely leaving, you don’t have to come up with excuses,” she slung her messenger back over her shoulder, and got to see Steve go pink, and Maria giving him a look that might’ve been ‘I’m going to kill you’ and might’ve been ‘I’m going to rock your world’. Or possibly ‘you’re making a bad life decision’. It was hard to tell with her.

“So you’re going to find her?”

“Steve, it’s not finding if I know where she is. It’s fetching. I’m going to go fetch for you. Like Lassie. Except I’m not crossdressing. It will take me less than ten minutes, so if you guys are going to boink on the desk, better make it quick,” she asserted.

Steve only nodded, and Maria was still giving him that weird, indescribable look.

So she went to Tony’s workshop. Lab was a misnomer. He did not do science down there. Labs were for science. What Tony did was robot Frankenstein shit. It was a workshop. Get it right, Steve, she said to herself, and pushed the elevator button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was terribly boring. I'm sorry. It was necessary to get through this in order to get to the next place. Which brings me to: sorry, the princess is in another castle.
> 
> (I hope this wasn't so facedesk boring that you give up on me. I think because I'm too excited to get to what's next, this felt like the worst intermission EVER even though I loved finally getting into a bit of a Tony groove, because Tony is terribly intimidating to write, and all of you that write him beautifully are perfect snowflakes.)
> 
> If you hadn't noticed, I fixed the chapter count so this is the penultimate - next one is it, guys. Obviously Stuff Happens, and that Stuff has been through about ninety permutations, and I think I'm finally happy with it.
> 
> And because I'm so excited about it, if I get it polished before next Tuesday's scheduled chapter posting, you will get it before next Tuesday's scheduled chapter posting. I'm not promising Saturday, but if I get my ducks in a row, and it's ready by like, Thursday, that's when you'll get it.
> 
> Lastly: bonus internet cookies to whomever can name the shitstorm drug/turf war in Caldwell NY that Natasha knows they don't want to get involved in. Because of course Natasha knows. How (and how much) she knows is up for wild speculation.
> 
> P.S. Since Natasha had to "call in some favors" to get Steve access to Bucky's file after Natasha dumped ALL THE SECRETS on the interwebs, I'm going out on a limb here and wagering that the connection between the Winter Soldier (seen masked and packin' heat) and Bucky Barnes is not a thing even the most astute of politicial science majors has put together. And I'm steering away from the idea that she would even know who Bucky Barnes is - maybe she learned a bit about Cap in school (buy war bonds! unite the people for a common cause!), but I'd put money on the idea that the Howling Commandos was a "special topic" box outlined in a different color in the textbook, rather than someone she learned in detail about. I mean, maybe I'm dating myself here, but I didn't go to school all that long ago, and I didn't learn about WASPs or the Tuskegee airmen until waaaay after school. Yes, race and gender, vs a mostly-white mostly-caucasian international group of soldiers hanging out with Cap, but with the American public school system, I'm just not buying that she remembers his name unless given several hints. Which... she's not getting yet.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pardon the POV transitions. Everyone gets a say in this chapter.
> 
> (And tiny in-text shoutout to all my nerds nerdin' it up this Labor Day weekend in the Atlanta heat.)

“Excuse me, Natasha?”

The Black Widow looked over from where she was speaking to, presumably, Tony, who was sitting just out of sight, probably building Skynet. The robot Frankenstein workshop was probably organized to Tony, but to her eye, utter chaos. Chaos, and apparently disobedient robots, if the dunce cap duct taped to one of them was any indication. She had to pick her away around tables and bits and parts to get close enough to Natasha to not shout. It was probably rude to shout at someone who could kill you with her thighs. Or a look.

“Yes?” Natasha approached her, and Darcy had to force herself not to step back like prey. She felt like prey. Maybe she shouldn’t’ve immediately started making lists of ways to get revenge on Natasha if she upset Bruce. Bruce was a big boy. He could probably fend for himself.

“Captain Rogers was looking for you.”

Natasha furrowed her brow and pulled her phone out of nowhere. It was probably a pocket, but how did she have pockets in something that fit that closely?

“I don’t have any messages.”

Darcy shrugged. “I’m just here to fetch.”

“Lewis, that you?”

“No.”

Tony’s head popped up into her sightline, eyes magnified by binocular lenses on his headset. She grinned at the sight.

“What? What ‘no’? I’m looking right at you,” he lifted one hand to gesture at her.

“Whatever you want. The answer is no.”

“Geez,” he started, and then looked down suddenly, and Darcy realized there was someone else in the room.

“What?” she heard Tony ask. “She doesn’t bite. I mean, maybe she does,” he looked up then back at whomever he was talking to. “Actually she probably does. Especially if you ask nicely.”

“What do you want, Tony?” she started picking her way towards him.

“I wanted you to meet Ketel One.”

“Fucking Dutch, Tony, not Russian,” the other person corrected him.

“Whatever,” Tony waved a hand at the person, a him, clearly. “Brooklyn doesn’t do vodka, only mobsters and moonshine. C’mere Lewis, he’s a little indisposed, otherwise his old school manners would’ve had him on his feet soon as you entered the room.”

“Fuck you Tony.”

Darcy was torn between amusement and curiosity and vague annoyance - she had shit to do, but this guy gave Tony as good as he got, and that was worth the meeting.

“Lewis, this is Cap’s best man from before the War to End All Wars. Meet…”

“James.” She wasn’t sure if it was a confused question or a surprised statement.

“Bucky,” Tony finished, and pointed a finger back and forth between them. “You two know each other? How?!”

“Hey Darcy.” James gave her a tight smile as her eyes flicked over to where Tony had a couple of the plates of his arms raised.

“Hey. So. Uh. Well. Okay. Nice to, uh, see you again, James. I just came to," she thumbed behind her, where Natasha presumably was. "... get Natasha. So. Yeah. Later, Tony!” She turned and started towards the door, but her exit was heralded by a clatter of metal and a startled noise from Tony.

“Hey! Careful Terminator!”

“Darcy. Wait a second.”

She turned back around, watching James twist his _metal arm_ and lay flat the little panels, listening to them lock into place with little clicks and whirrs and hisses. She couldn’t think of her words. Her emotions were a swirly and confusing mess.

“Sorry. This is… weird.”

She let out an uneasy laugh. “I like weird. Weird’s all I got. That, and my sweet style.”

He frowned a little, even as a smile spread across his face.

“I didn’t mean for… well. It’s… good to see you.”

“It’s… good to see you too. And,” she laughed a little. “Weird seems to be our thing. I feel like I could be mad, but I’m… not? I’m annoyed that you cancelled all future dates via text message, and that you lied about being permanently out of the country. I want to feel like you owed me honesty, but it was two dates.”

”Well I wasn’t going to tell you my therapist and I decided that dating wasn’t my best idea when I couldn’t be honest with my potential partner,” he recited, but she wasn’t entirely listening. 

“Two really fantastic dates and holy shit, you’re like, a hundred, aren’t you? I think that’s weirder than anything else so far today, and today has been pretty damn weird. Oh god. You killed my favorite president,” she spoke the last two words from behind cupped hands.

”Darcy, I… don’t even know where to… who was your favorite president?” He frowned, his eyebrow raised in question. It was a little glimpse of the guy she knew, even though the hand raised in casual confusion was shiny and metal.

”Well it wasn’t McKinley!” she swatted him on the non-metal arm and then put both her hands over her lips briefly. “You didn’t kill Roosevelt, did you?! Because that is not listed as an assassination in the history books, but Roosevelt was also really awesome and he founded the UN and…” 

Bucky took her face in his hands and kissed her. Soft lips against hers, with the slight scratch of stubble. Her heart may have stopped for a second.

“You’re babbling,” he whispered, pulling away. 

“I’m a little overwhelmed,” she whispered back.

”I’m sorry, cookie. I really am. And now the cat’s outta the bag…”

”We should talk about this.”

”Well, not…”

”Not right now.”

”I was gonna say ‘not a lot more to talk about’.”

”Oh,” she pulled away abruptly, and tried to look anywhere but at him, putting her hand to her forehead to rub the spot between her brows. “Right. Yeah. Nothing to really talk about. Now I know. Now you know. Now I’ve gotta…” she thumbed behind herself. “I’ve gotta go,” she turned quickly and walked away, heels clicking rapidly on the wooden floors.

“You fucked that up,” she heard Tony say as she walked through the doors.

She had to get some air. She took big inhalations to keep the emotional overload from becoming a snotfest, because it felt _stupid_ to cry over this. Two dates, and the guy was an ex-HYDRA assassin. So what. _Whatever._

She reached the elevator and pushed the button rapidly, her face flushed. She couldn’t tell which emotion was reigning supreme - if it was embarrassment (at least 60%), anger (enh, somewhere around 20%, most of it at herself), or the stabbing hurt of his flippant dismissal after that kiss (40%, or thereabouts). Oh, and confusion: 87%.

“Doll, wait up,” she heard him call her (well, that supposed there weren’t any more girls in his life he called ‘doll’, but what did she know?), and couldn’t help but turn towards his voice and catching sight of him coming down the hall before turning back to the elevator and mashing the button again.

“Cookie, please,” she heard from behind her, and sighed.

“Thought we had nothing to talk about.”

“I shouldn’t’a said it like that. I meant that you know all there is to know, don’cha? A file or something you’ve read that connects all the dots. Ain’t got no secrets left,” he offered quietly, and she turned to face him, folding her arms over her chest.

“First of all, I only got the briefest of briefing files on the members of the Initiative. Which you’re apparently not? And when I said ‘we should talk’, I meant ‘let’s not have this totally weird conversation about how I missed you and you’re a geriatric ex-Russian super-assassin in front of Tony, and Natasha’. Where the hell is Natasha, anyway?”

He reached out his metal hand towards her elbow, and she couldn't help but follow it with her eyes. Sure enough, there it was, all the way up into the sleeve, little interlocking plates that made tiny hydraulic noises as he bent his arm. He suddenly pulled it back, crossing his arms over his chest in a mirror of her pose.

“I don’t know what you want from me right now,” his voice had dulled, gone harsh, and she furrowed her brow, taking in the face which had been soft before, and was now curiously bland.

She shrugged. “I… to be honest, I’m still grappling with this,” she waved one wrist from her crossed arms. “I liked James,” she said after a pause. “But I apparently didn't know him, you, very well. So.”

“I didn’t know you worked for Stark.” He paused.

“Technically I work for Pepper. And Steve, I guess.”

“I saw you," he blurted. "Few weeks back.”

“What, and you didn’t say anything?”

“What the hell was I suppos’d to say?!" The words erupted, his shoulders pulled up defensively. "Hey doll, look, it’s me, and I do private security for Tony Stark an’ whomever else S.H.I.E.L.D tells me to! Private security is code for killin’ people, jus’ in case you missed that part,” he leaned forward a little to drive home his flippancy.

“Well I would’ve settled for ‘hi’ and the rest could have been parcelled out over _multiple dates_ because guess what?!” Her hands flew out into the air for emphasis. “I work for Tony Stark too! It is not a big fucking deal to work for Tony Stark!”

“It really is!” They both turned their heads whip-fast towards the voice at the end of the hall.

“Shut up!” They shouted in unison.

Turning back towards each other, arms crossed again, Darcy twisted her torso to jam the elevator button again.

They shared a prolonged pause, and Darcy idly wondered what was up with the damn elevator. This wasn’t DragonCon.

“So," she frowned, more confusion than anger. "You’re giving me some mixed signals here, and since the elevator isn’t going to rescue me from this awkward explosion… why blow me off then kiss me like that? Hello, confusing.”

“You’re taking all this in stride.”

It was her turn to shrug, shaking her head in confusion. “What did you expect?”

“I don’ know, but not for the girl who thought I was stalkin’ ‘er to barely blink when she found me gettin’ my hydraulics upgraded in her boss’s lab.”

“First, Tony is not my boss. Pepper. Steve. When I say ‘working for Tony’, I really only mean in the vaguest sense of the word, that he owns most of the company that signs my paychecks. And it’s not a lab, it’s a workshop. Second, I totally blinked. I blinked a lot. I blinked so hard I backpedaled out of there using only monosyllabic communication methods. How, exactly, would it have been productive to go all telenovela on you? I’m not totally crazy, FYI.”

“Except you _waltzed_ right out,” he cast his metal arm out to the side, “without lettin’ me finish a damn sentence!”

Darcy put her hands up near her face and gritted her teeth. “After you _kissed_ me! And! UGH! Seriously! I’m trying to have a normal conversation here!”

He huffed out a breath. “Fat chance of that.”

“Takes two to tango, buddy,” she shot back.

The silence stretched again, and she lost it, turning around and mashing the elevator button again. “Seriously?! What is with this fucking elevator?!”

“Darcy.”

“ _What._ ”

He sighed softly. “This was shit, okay? When it started and I thought it could just be a fling…”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“I’ve got a few problems I’m working through,” he continued. “So when I saw you outside Maria’s office…”

“Maria Hill?”

He frowned, quizzical. “Uh, yeah.”

“So she knows you knew who I was? Or, that we went out?”

“Yeeeah,” he dragged the word out. “What about it?”

“So if Maria knows, Steve knows.”

“Uh, yeah. What’s your point?”

“Steve sent me down here. To retrieve Natasha, because apparently she wasn’t answering his texts, but he knew right where she was.”

“Right where he knew I was.”

“Yep,” she popped the ‘p’.

“They planned this,” James said. "Fuck," he said softly, resigned, as he stuffed his hands in his pockets for a moment, pulling them back out and crossing his arms. He picked at his henley sleeve, which didn’t cover the metal hand sticking out of the end.

“Sucks having other people make your decisions for you, doesn’t it?”

“Darcy.” His voice was flat, harsh warring with exhaustion.

She sighed. “This is way too much drama-rama for two dates. This is why I don’t date at work. Nothing but secret agents and superheroes and, apparently, a growing number of well-preserved World War II heroes.”

His shoulders fell. “This’s why I was keepin’ secrets. This doesn’t work with me, Darce. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I swear.”

She looked away for a moment, eyes focused on something down the empty hallway. “You afraid it won’t work if we try? Or do you not want to even try because you’re not interested? The first one I can work with. And... all this," she waved her hand around, "notwithstanding, I like you. In case that was a factor in your answer. You know. At all.”

“I think… I think I wanted to go too fast. I… wanted to be Bucky Barnes, and I thought I was ready. I’m not. I… I want that life. I wanted to be that guy for you, doll. But I’m something in-between right now and I can’t see how that doesn’t become a total fucking disaster.”

Darcy nodded. “Ouch. Gotta respect the honest truth though,” she kept nodding and then met his eye. “James,” she said his name on a sigh. “I’m sure I’ll see you around. I promise it won’t be weird. Well, I promise I won’t make it weirdER . Or I’ll try not to. It’s not like we were dating for months or something.” Her voice softened and she gave a half shrug. "Two dates."

“The arm would’ve given me away.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess I’ll take the stairs, since apparently the elevator is out of order for the rest of my life.”

“See ya... Darcy.” His voice softened on her name.

She smiled softly and turned towards the stairwell, depressing the bar which made a clunk in the empty hallway.

Tony peeked out of his workshop and spied the singly-occupied hallway. He strolled to the elevator, glancing at James, and pressed the call button. The doors opened immediately, revealing Natasha sitting with her legs folded like a pretzel, playing a game of Solitaire, the cards spread out on the floor.

“Nice. You coerced my AI into helping you with your nefarious plot,” he said, looking down at her. She didn’t look up, just flipped another card and smiled to herself, then gathered them all together and unfolded herself into a standing position.

“Not the first nefarious plot she’s participated in.”

Tony gasped, clutching his chest. “Friday,” he sounded disappointed as he looked up.

“It’s true, boss,” the AI replied.

Natasha pushed past Tony as she exited the elevator to stand in front of James.

“You want this?” Natasha prodded. He inhaled and exhaled, blinking slowly and looking away. “Then go get her.”

“Natalia,” he protested.

“Then _go get her_. You want normal? Normal is never going to happen, Yasha. But you can have good.” Her voice softened, and he looked at her, holding her gaze. “Don’t let good walk away because of fear.”

James stared at her for several seconds, then abruptly moved in close and pulled her into a tight hug, her head resting on his chest, and her arms going around him.

“Take your own advice sometime,” he murmured into her hair, pressing his lips against her temple. He squeezed her once, and moved past her, entering the elevator.

“Go get her, tiger,” Tony gave him an encouraging fist pump, and a little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

She wasn’t in the CEO lobby, and both Pepper and a blonde woman he didn’t know gave him strange looks.

“James?” Pepper called. “Tony’s in his workshop.”

“‘M lookin’ for Darcy.”

Pepper tilted her head, giving him a look somewhere between confused and knowing, tinged with a smile. “If she’s not in Maria’s office, she might be down in R&D with Jane.”

“‘Preciate it, ma’am,” he bobbed a nod in thanks and darted back out the door.

He checked Jane’s lab first, and struck gold.

“Darcy!”

She was sitting in one wheeled chair, feet propped in another, and the sound of her shouted name startled her, and she ended up on the floor. He took long strides towards her, but Bruce was nearer, and he helped her up.

James reached her as Bruce helped her back to her feet, and he slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, pressing his lips to hers.

“Whoa, okay,” Bruce muttered, raising his hands and backing away.

She pushed James away, both hands on her chest, brow furrowed. He held on to her waist.

“Whoa. Whoa. What the hell is happening right now?”

“Darcy, I’m fucking terrified. I want this, and it scares the hell out of me.”

Both her brows rose into her hairline. “Um.”

He smirked and leaned in again, and her protests came to an abrupt end. His metal hand slipped up the side of her neck and under her hair as he deepened the kiss. He nibbled on her full lower lip, and then dipped his tongue into her mouth, stroking it along hers, eliciting a whimper as her hands moved up his back, fingers tightening on his shirt.

“This going to be a complete nightmare,” he offered with a smile, parting from her mouth, his words separated by tiny puffs of air she could feel on her lips and on the sensitive skin rubbed by his prickly stubble. She licked her lips and looked up at him, pulling a little further away, but not out of the warmth of his embrace as his fingers stroked her back and twirled against the nape of her neck.

“I’m apparently to be avoided at all costs three days a month and on any days I deal with Accounting.”

“I can’t tell you all my secrets right now.”

“Egads,” she grinned. “Leave some mystery for later. I am miserable before coffee, and frequently forget to buy cereal when I eat the last of it. I kick in my sleep and have a really weird pet peeve about food left on dishes in the sink. And putting the lid of the toilet seat down.”

“I did actually assassinate your favorite president. In my defense, I don't remember a lot of specifics after 1945.”

“I can work with that,” she smiled, and closed the distance between them again, kissing him four times briefly before he pulled away.

“Go out with me? I was thinking dinner.”

She held his gaze for a moment, then turned her head to the side and shouted, startling him a little. “Jane! I’m leaving! You’ll have to ride the train by yourself tonight!” There was a nonverbal noise given in response, and she smiled. “I’m free tonight.”

He stroked his thumb across her cheekbone. “Now we’re cookin’ with gas.”

“I love when you talk 40s to me,” she smiled.

He leaned back in. “Baby doll, you are the cat’s meow,” he grinned, and dipped her over his forearm to kiss her again.

“Hubba hubba,” she whispered, stifling a giggle, and he nipped her lip with a grin.

“Um, if you guys could move a foot to the left,” Bruce’s voice broke into their haze.

“Oh god, Bruce! I’m sorry,” Darcy pushed herself into James and pushed him out of Bruce’s way. She looked up at James. “We really need to get better at location scouting for our make-out sessions.”

He grinned. “My old lady lives in Brooklyn. ‘S closer than my place.”

“Fast moves, soldier.”

“She’s pretty keen on me. She might allow it.”

Darcy’s grin matched his own. “She might. She has a thing for this fuddy-duddy who’s a total dreamboat.”

He let out a bark of laughter and pulled out of the embrace, his hand sliding down to hers. She switched hands, taking his metal hand in hers and squeezing it once, and looked over towards Jane.

“I’ll tell her,” Bruce offered with a little smile.

Darcy nodded, and pulled James towards the door. He stopped them short and turned towards Bruce.

“Friend once told me normal is never gonna happen. But good can. An’ not to let good walk away ‘cause I was afraid.” Bruce pressed his lips together and took his glasses off, and began to clean the lenses on his shirt.

“Friend, huh?”

“Yeah. ‘S good advice.”

“Have a good night Darce. James,” he nodded at the two of them and put his glasses back on and turned back to his computer.

“C’mon dreamboat. What’re your thoughts on hot dogs and boxed mac and cheese?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly: The "weird's all I got" bit is Darcy directly quoting Moss from "The I.T. Crowd", which, if you haven't watched, add that to your list too. That line is definitely not mine at all. From Moss's lips to my personal motto.
> 
> Secondly: thank you to everyone who has stuck with me as this story evolved beyond its outline. To accommodate this growth, there were some side plots that were shed that I'm still rather fond of. In that vein, I'm expecting at some point in the future to write at least two one-shots in this 'verse.
> 
> Thirdly: everyone's effusive praise and encouragement for my first Wintershock fic and my first fic on AO3 was awesome. You are such a great community of fans, and I can't say thank you enough.
> 
> Lastly: now that I've got the bug for writing Wintershock, I've got a decent-sized one-shot I'm working on that will hopefully go up in the next couple of weeks. I fed it my wordcount when this one made me stumble.


End file.
